The new exhibition ‘Street Food City’ from the Museum of Food and Drink (Mofad) not only celebrates the tamales, hot dogs and ‘halal’ dishes that feed New York, but also puts the spotlight on history and struggle of the 20,500 sellers, of which one 96% are immigrants. This phenomenon, rooted since the 17th century, is a fundamental part of the city’s identity, but it is not without great challenges.
Tamales, hot dogs, ‘halal’ dishes… Anyone who has walked through New York has seen, or tried, the street food offered by some 20,500 vendors, 96% of them immigrants, since last Saturday they are starring in an exhibition in a museum.
‘Street Food City’ is the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Food and Drink (Mofad), a journey through the history of this business that took root when the city was founded in the 17th century and that, although it has evolved a lot, maintains many similarities with the past.
«There are many people on the street feeding us every day. It is a good way of saying: let’s stop, look at them and be grateful for what they bring to the city, the community and our culinary scene,” Mofad’s curatorial director, Catherine Piccoli, explained to EFE.
The role of immigrant sellers
If in 1925 89% of the sellers were immigrants, in 2025 they are already 96%, more than half Hispanic (60%), mainly from Mexico and Ecuador, and from the beginning they face regulations that lead to licenses only for some and face criminalization for the rest.
Two figures from yesterday and today are ‘Pig Foot Mary’ and the tamale maker Evelia Coyotzi, who reflect the key role of women in this business, both as providers for their homes and as small business owners, as well as their influence on local culture and the impact of working legally or not.
The first, a black immigrant from Mississippi, began selling pigs’ trotters out of a secondhand baby carriage and became a Harlem legend in the 1920s after obtaining a license.
Coyotzi, a Mexican, who today has a famous establishment, began selling tamales from a supermarket cart in 2001, where even Anthony Bourdain went, but she was arrested several times for operating without a permit and that launched her into activism for the rights of vendors.
The struggle of street vendors
The exhibition dedicates an area to this activism, born in parallel to the population boom in New York at the beginning of the 20th century, coinciding with the arrival of the first open-air markets and with the cyclical restrictions of the authorities on the sale of food on the street for reasons of health or pedestrian passage.
The lowest moments were with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1934-1946), who in the face of the 1939 World’s Fair reduced the licenses of vendors and relocated them to public markets.
After the Immigration and Nationality Act 1965, more people arrived from all over the world, making street food grow, but in the 1980s new limits on licenses were imposed, occasionally extended.
The number of licenses is limited to 7,000 and 445 are added each year, but a waiting list of 10,000 has generated a black market that multiplies the $250 fee by up to 100, pushing many into the irregular economy and exposing them to arrest.
«They have a fine of at least $1,000 and a criminal summons. So, if you are following an immigration process, this is something that will haunt you. In addition, there are five different agencies that can enforce these rules,” Piccoli added.
The challenges of operating a mobile restaurant
As if that were not enough, food carts must follow certain distance standards on sidewalks and exceed the standards of the Department of Health, which gives them scores, as it does with traditional restaurants.
Added to these difficulties is the business of running a cart that adapts to the needs of the food, in many cases a “restaurant on wheels” that employs cooks, cleaners or salespeople, as the story of the successful ‘Birrialandia’ shows.
Many salespeople also have studies and careers in their countries of origin that they could not develop in the United States, and they spend more than eight hours a day to earn between 12,000 and 50,000 dollars a year in one of the most expensive cities in the world, according to the exhibition.
Still, 95% of street food vendors say they enjoy their work, a survey indicates. You only have to observe the lines that form at any hour in front of the carts, and the effusiveness with which New Yorkers talk about their food, to know that the appreciation is mutual.
With EFE information
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