The outer layer of these bite-sized confections glistens from the date syrup, while the sesame seeds give them an extra crunch. We recommend eating them fresh out of the frying pan in order to really experience the crunchy outside and soft, airy center.

This simple combination of olive oil and dried herbs baked into flat bread of varying thickness is a street food staple throughout the Middle East. In Abu Dhabi, there is a particularly high concentration of options in Zone 1, along Muroor Road. We recommend enjoying yours as fresh out of the oven as possible.

It also reheats well. Our recommendation: Manakish Express. This wafer-thin crepe-looking bread is made with whole wheat flour and filled with a thin layer of cheese, egg, honey or fish paste. The result is a crispy street snack that's not as filling as the other items on our list.

In Abu Dhabi, you can find dozens of takes on this flaky layered flatbread. The traditional way to enjoy parotta is with curry. But as this is the Middle East, you can also find shish tawook and shawarma versions. At House of Tea , the options get really bizarre.

Along with a cup of karak or Kashmiri tea, you can enjoy parotta stuffed with anything from chicken nuggets to chili Cheetos. The latter gets the nod for crunchiest, most creative and least nutritional.

These crispy triangular pastries are a popular street snack throughout the Middle East. In Abu Dhabi, you'll find several savory options along Muroor Road in Zone 1. The most common fillings are meat or potato. Vegetarian versions are also popular. Last but certainly not least, this amalgamation of some of the best Middle Eastern ingredients is an essential stop on any Abu Dhabi food crawl.

You'll find the highest concentration of shawarma vendors along Hamdan Street. And Zahrat Lebnan is another local favorite with a few locations. They have chicken and lamb options, with the latter simply referred to as meat. For a bit of spice with your chicken and garlic sauce, try the Mexican.

Brian enjoys exploring cities along public transit lines and writing about it at his blog, imayroam. He also writes about food tours, layovers, and exploring movie and musical landmarks.

Brian has traveled to 57 countries as well as every state. The best part is the build-your-own delicacy costs only 85 cents per taco.

While some street foods are renowned for their compact portability, guisados are proudly wet and dripping, their flavorful interiors unwilling to trade in complexity and aroma for convenience.

Found all over Mexico, these soulful guisados are displayed in orange cazuelas and served on plastic plates, sometimes even covered with an additional plastic bag for extra juice protection via Taste.

You can't go wrong with the fried, carb-tastic triangular dumplings known as samosas. Samosas are popular around the world, and for good reason. Ranging from about two inches in diameter to the size of a fist, samosa wrappers can be either thin and ultra crispy, or a bit thicker like a pastry crust.

Inside, you can find both vegetarian and meat fillings. Popular flavors include potato with peas, or minced lamb. When purchased on the streets of India, samosas are often made fresh and fried instantly.

Vendors can be seen rolling the dough and expertly filling and folding them into their iconic triangle shape. Sometimes the samosas are served with sweet and savory chutneys. The sweet chutney is made of tamarind and dates, and the green chutney is made of mint, cilantro, and chilies.

Fast, easy, and ultra portable, street samosas can sell for as little as 86 cents. These hand-pulled wheat noodles are coated with a luxurious black sauce made from pork and fermented black soybean. Sweet and salty, this dish has origins in China, where a dish with a similar sounding name, zhajiangmian, is also eaten today via Post Magazine.

However, these are two distinct and different dishes. The Chinese zhajiangmian is more of a soybean-based minced meat sauce, while jajangmyeon is a silkier, smoother, fermented sauce that's heavier on the black bean flavor and with larger chunks of pork. This hearty, flavorful dish is often served with pickles or fresh vegetables to balance its intense flavor.

Sometimes the dish will include other vegetables such as onions, mushroom, or cabbage stir fried directly into the sauce.

Simple, yet delicious, jajangmyeon is a popular and low-priced meal you can grab for around 80 cents from street vendors in Korea.

Momos are delicious Nepalese dumplings that can be either steamed or fried. They have both meat and vegetarian fillings, including buffalo most traditional , pork, chicken, garlic cheese, and cheese and potato. Chopped onion and tomato are also common ingredients. Sometimes they are served alongside a curry sauce, or a special momo sauce called achar.

Sometimes they are small, and other times they're huge, but they are always delicious. Not just a national dish, momos are an important comfort food in Nepal, as well as in Tibet and Bhutan. They have been around for centuries and are an integral part of the food culture via Slow Food.

With the spread of Nepalese migration, the love of momos has followed. They are now a very popular street food across India, and although they look similar to Chinese dumplings or xiaolongbao, momo are distinct in their nepalese spices and ingredients.

There are few things in this world as satisfying as the sound and feel of crunching into a freshly made jianbing in the morning. While the exterior is a soft crepe-like wrapping, the fillings are crunchy, aromatic, and a punch of flavor.

But almost better than eating a jianbing is watching it being made right in front of you. First a doughy batter is spread onto a circular crepe griddle. Then an egg is cracked and spread onto the surface. This is followed by a few spoonfuls of green onions and mustard greens, followed by various sauces, such as hoisin.

The jianbing is then filled with fresh veggies, and the secret to its success — a large, deep fried, rectangular cracker which provides the distinctive texture. The whole thing is then folded into a delicious, portable snack.

It can be eaten any time of day, but the jianbing is most popular for breakfast. These delicious pockets of goodness are popular around the world in various wrappings and fillings. They can be found fried, baked, or grilled, and make for a satisfying, cheap, and quick meal.

Like with momos and dumplings, the empanada's origin is not clear-cut, but it is widely believed to have originated from Galicia, Spain.

Regardless, every country that has adopted the handheld pastry has adapted the recipe to reflect their own culture and history. In Colombia, the empanadas are wrapped in a cornmeal dough, which gives them a distinctive yellow color.

Traditionally, they come filled with either shredded beef, shredded pork, shredded chicken, potatoes, or cheese. Sometimes they are made with ground meat or rice, and they are often served alongside a wedge of lime and a spicy green sauce called ají via My Colombian Recipes.

Not only are empanadas sold on the streets, they are often found outside churches, and are incredibly affordable.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica , what we recognize as corn has gone through over 10, years of human breeding to transform from a grass-like plant to the grain we know and love today. Today, corn on the cob is enjoyed in various styles around the world. In Taiwan it's coated in a thick barbecue sauce and spun on a spit.

In Mexico, it's known as elote and covered in mayo, chili, crema, lime, and cheese. In Pakistan, it's called challi, and is one of the most popular street foods , and one that is desperately missed by those living abroad. Challi is normally cooked by burying the corn in powdered coals and ash, roasting it to perfection, then rubbing on lime and spices, the most important of which are salt and chili powder.

Sometimes it's even cooked in sand or directly in salt itself, using a large pan and spatula. However, the corn used in challi isn't the juicy, sweet corn common in the United States, but rather a chewier, meatier, variety. That makes for a savory, filling, and tasty meal for less than 50 cents.

As Fried Chillies tells it, a King fell ill and asked for a restorative soup. The soup was made spicier than usual for the benefit of the king's illness-numbed taste buds.

The resulting dish was called suap ratu "fed to the king" ; the name was eventually corrupted over time into soto. Vegetarians can breathe a sigh of relief: they can still enjoy Indonesian street food by ordering the salad known as gado-gado.

The name literally translates to "mix-mix"; after all, the dish is a mixture of blanched and fresh vegetables, tofu, and tempeh , bathed in a peanut-based sauce. The dish can be garnished with hard-boiled egg slices and sautéed onions, and served with a side dish of kripik deep-fried, starchy crackers.

Unlike most other Indonesian street foods, gado-gado has easily crossed over into restaurants and hotels throughout the region; the salad is a regular mainstay in Singapore's hawker centers and some of Indonesia's posher dining places. Another usually meat-free street food, ketoprak resembles gado-gado in its use of peanut sauce as a dressing.

The difference lies in ketoprak's use of rice noodles and lontong , a form of compressed rice. Bean sprouts, chili, garlic, tofu, shallots, and kripik complete the ensemble, with some stalls adding hard-boiled eggs and cucumber slices.

Food lore has it that ketoprak originated as a traditional dish in Cirebon, West Java. When ordering ketoprak, you can specify how spicy you want your portion to be; the sellers tend to prepare each serving individually.

Visitors to Jakarta's genteel Menteng district home to President Obama when he was still living in Indonesia can drop by after dark to sit at a plastic table and chair and tuck into the stuff, washed down with teh botol cold tea bottled up like a softdrink.

Nasi gila is just one of Jakarta's many street-food rice preparations; the capital city's workers love to tuck into fried rice nasi goreng dishes with descriptive names.

The Jakarta Globe reports on a few local variants, including " nasi goreng ganja - so named because of its alleged addictive quality" and the " mawud nasi goreng sold by vendors on Jalan Haji Lebar in Meruya, West Jakarta Mawud is a play on the word maut , meaning lethal or the hour of death.

The Indonesians loved President Obama when he visited their country, and he loved them right back - or at least he loved their food. Thanking his Indonesian hosts for a good dinner, Obama exclaimed, " Terima kasih untuk bakso semuanya enak! it's all delicious! Bakso is a major player in the Indonesian street food scene: a delicious, hearty, and cheap source of protein served from pushcarts.

The meatballs vary in size from golf-ball to tennis-ball humongous the latter are aptly called bakso bola tenis - the meatballs have hard-boiled eggs in the middle. These springy balls of mystery meat are mixed with noodles and a hearty broth, then garnished with fried shallots, hardboiled egg, and bok choy.

Richer regional variants add wontons, the Chinese dumplings known as siomay siu mai , and tofu. To add kick to the dish, diners generally eat bakso with a side of sambal , or Indonesian chili paste.

If you simply can't appreciate food unless it's fifty percent habanero peppers, then you'll feel right at home in the eastern Indonesian city of Manado: the local Minahasa ethnic group eats everything with chilies.

And we mean everything - the Minahasa even dip their bananas in chili paste! Which is not to say that Manado cuisine is all about starting five-alarm fires in your mouth; Minahasa cooks love to enhance their dishes with fragrant herbs like basil, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaf.

The foods in this image bear all the unmistakable signs of Manado food's heat and fragrance. A mound of white rice nasi sits in the middle; on the upper left, there's cakalang rica-rica "cakalang" is skipjack tuna, a staple meat in seaside Manado; "rica-rica" refers to a red chili that the Minahasa love to stir-fry with their protein.

Partly covering the cakalang on the lower left, you'll see a large patty of bakwan jagung corn fritters. Rounding up the plate are rica rodo a vegetable dish of stir-fried corn, eggplant, chili and belinjo leaves and a skewer of pork saté.

Bananas in chili paste? Only the chili-crazy Minahasa of Indonesia's North Sulawesi province could come up with a street food so unlikely, but so delicious at the same time!

In Manado, you can pick up pisang roa to snack on at most street stands around the city. A portion of pisang roa includes one or two newly-fried bananas and a shallow bowl filled with sambal roa ; you're supposed to dip the banana into the sambal with every bite.

The Minahasa love their sambal , and have developed a repertoire of chili pastes that go into almost every dish they make. Other famous sambal from the area include sambal dabu-dabu a sambal made from fresh chili, shallots and tomatoes and sambal rica-rica a chili dish made of fresh red chilies stir-fried with fish or other meats.

The Best Street Foods You Can Buy For $1 · Pizza, USA · Luroufan (braised pork on rice), Taiwan · Spring rolls, Vietnam This Best Street Food Around the World guide shares 50 favorite street foods from 50 different countries From sweet cheese rolls to stuffed pastries, these are our top picks for your budget-friendly Abu Dhabi food crawl

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Affordable ethnic street food - Missing The Best Street Foods You Can Buy For $1 · Pizza, USA · Luroufan (braised pork on rice), Taiwan · Spring rolls, Vietnam This Best Street Food Around the World guide shares 50 favorite street foods from 50 different countries From sweet cheese rolls to stuffed pastries, these are our top picks for your budget-friendly Abu Dhabi food crawl

If Szechuan cuisine suits your fancy, Chengtu Chicken is worth the time. A true scotch egg consists of a hard-cooked egg wrapped enveloped in sausage, then coated in bread crumbs and baked or fried!

Here is one of my favorite inexpensive homemade Chinese food dishes. Chinese chop suey is the quintessential comfort dish — chicken or pork and vegetables cooked in a flavorful sauce. Served with fresh steamed green beans and jasmine rice, you might want to consider making a double batch as the family will go back for seconds and thirds!

Chicken Tikka tends to get overcomplicated in recipes, but this one is fine, quick and easy. Ethnic foods are delicious! Thai style sweet and sour dish with tomatoes cucumber, onion, pineapple, sweet pepper and spring …. The key to good tempura is fresh ingredients, lumpy batter and a constant oil temperature.

Used …. Canning ~ Preserving Copycat ~ Clone Dehydrated- Dried Foods Dirt Cheap Recipes Dump Recipes Ethnic Inexpensively Keto Make Your Own Ramen Recipes Holidays Valentines Day St.

No-bake mango float cake is a quick and easy light dessert reminiscent of icebox cake. This … continue reading.

Crab Rangoons are a delicious appetizer for any occasion, but make a wonderfully simple game … continue reading. Esquites, aka Mexican street corn salad is both smoky and spicy with hints of tangy … continue reading.

I love tamales plural but they can be really time-consuming to make. When I saw … continue reading. Fattoush is a delicious Lebanese salad topped with fried khubz basically crunchy pita chips , radishes, … continue reading.

German Currywurst is a savory street food of pork sausages smothered in a curried tomato … continue reading. This quick 3-ingredient homemade mirin works perfectly as a substitute for many delectable recipes calling … continue reading. Brought to Singapore by the people of Hainan an island off the southern-most coast of … continue reading.

cornstarch 2 tbsp. water ½ scallion — … continue reading. It's easy to look at Abu Dhabi's magnificent five-star hotels with elaborate brunches and think that this is what you eat when visiting the United Arab Emirates capital.

But if you know where to look, you can find much of the same street food that you'll see in Beirut, Mumbai or Istanbul. Here are 10 affordable street foods to try in Abu Dhabi. Photo courtesy of Brian Cicioni.

Halawet el-jibn translates to sweet cheese. The Syrians have taken these soft-as-a-pillow cheese rolls around the world. In Abu Dhabi, you'll see a handful of options along Khalidiya Street.

They're typically cut into small bites and topped with enough crushed pistachio to give them a slight crunchiness. Unlike many of the other street snacks in this list, halawet el-jibn are just as good, if not better, the next day.

Our recommendation: Al Sultan Sweet. This rich, creamy milk tea is probably the easiest item to find on our list. Think masala chai but with fewer spices.

And in this case, the dominant cinnamon and cardamom flavors are all you need. Karak tea also goes well with any of the other popular street food items you'll find in Abu Dhabi. Our recommendation: Bait Al Shay. These fried patties are crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside.

In Abu Dhabi, they're typically stuffed with ground lamb, onion and pine nuts. You can enjoy them plain, which is what we recommend if you're trying these American football-shaped meze for the first time.

They also go well with tahini or tzatziki sauce. Some places will serve them with plain yogurt. Our recommendation: Zahrat Lebnan. Knafeh is one of the most popular Middle Eastern sweets to go.

A typical square slice will be about an inch thick with gooey cheese wedged between crispy shredded filo dough. Compared to baklava, the sweetness is more subtle and it's also more delicate.

At Qwaider Al Nabulsi , they serve custard and cheese versions. Inside this small and efficient sweet shop, they have both on display just an inch above their circular stoves, which keep them warm throughout the day.

You can watch the team cut away at the latter, with the cheese clinging to the round base like what you'd see when removing a slice of Chicago deep-dish pizza from the pie. Ask the staff, and they'll tell you they're serving Palestinian-style knafeh.

These sweet and simple deep-fried dough balls are omnipresent throughout Abu Dhabi and much of the Middle East. The outer layer of these bite-sized confections glistens from the date syrup, while the sesame seeds give them an extra crunch.

We recommend eating them fresh out of the frying pan in order to really experience the crunchy outside and soft, airy center. This simple combination of olive oil and dried herbs baked into flat bread of varying thickness is a street food staple throughout the Middle East.

In Abu Dhabi, there is a particularly high concentration of options in Zone 1, along Muroor Road. We recommend enjoying yours as fresh out of the oven as possible. It also reheats well.

Our recommendation: Manakish Express. This wafer-thin crepe-looking bread is made with whole wheat flour and filled with a thin layer of cheese, egg, honey or fish paste. The result is a crispy street snack that's not as filling as the other items on our list. In Abu Dhabi, you can find dozens of takes on this flaky layered flatbread.

The traditional way to enjoy parotta is with curry. But as this is the Middle East, you can also find shish tawook and shawarma versions.