Anissa Helou has traveled throughout the Mediterranean to research and photograph its street foods. What not to miss when you travel? She’ll tell you. Let’s meet Anissa Helou.

Q: Why is there a Mediterranean street food tradition at all?

You’ll find more street food on the eastern and southern sides of the Mediterranean than on the west, and there are reasons for that. Historically, when travelers stopped at inns in France, Spain or Italy, the inns provided food, whereas in Turkey or Lebanon, the travelers had to go out to stalls or little cafes to get food. Also, in the souks (markets), the traders don’t close for lunch, so you have ambulant vendors providing breakfast, lunch, snacks, tea, whatever. It’s a necessity.

Q: Is street food more prevalent at any particular time of day?

The fun thing is that it goes on all day. In Morocco, at the stalls that prepare breakfast, you can have bean soup or pancakes. A bit later, you see vendors putting the tagines on for lunch. In between, you have boiled eggs or nuts. In Lebanon you have galettes —they’re flatbreads with sesame seed and a little za’atar on top. In some places you might have dinner on the street, but mostly at night everybody goes home to their wives or mothers to eat.

Q: Is street food taken home sometimes, as Americans might buy takeout food?

You can take it home. Some dishes are street food specialties and you don’t find them in shops. One example is sfinge, a Moroccan doughnut, basically. In Lebanon, there’s shawarma, which is like döner kebabi. It’s not made at home and rarely in restaurants. Another typical example is ful medames in Egypt, cooked in huge copper or metal pots and sold from carts. People come with their pots and ask the vendor to fill them, and they take it home for breakfast. And the greatest example, one of my favorites, is mechoui, whole roast lamb cooked in pit ovens. You buy it by weight, and they put it on little pieces of paper with salt and cumin. You eat around the counter or go to a little café nearby. Sometimes people buy the whole lamb for parties.

Q: What’s a street-food breakfast like in Lebanon?

There’s a great street breakfast in Lebanon, and it’s one of the first things I have when I go back there. It’s a kind of sweet sandwich, and the bread is a kind of sesame galette shaped like a handbag. The filling is a sort of semolina cheese pie soaked in syrup. The vendor opens the galette and soaks it in the syrup, then stuffs in as much of the pie as he can. It’s impossible to look elegant eating this because it’s very big and drippy, so it’s better to hide in a corner. Worse, it’s about a thousand calories a bite.

Q: What kind of beverages do you find on the street throughout the Mediterranean?

There are lots of juice stalls. Depending on what’s in season, you can have sugar cane juice or pomegranate, carrot, grape, grapefruit or orange juice. Some of these stalls are amazingly decorated with fruits. The drawback is that they serve the drinks in proper glasses and the hygiene is not so developed. They simply rinse the glasses between customers and sometimes don’t have straws, so you have to make a decision. Do you want to risk other people’s germs and have the delicious juice, or try to find a more modern vendor who has straws? I usually bite the bullet and hope for the best.

Q: What Mediterranean countries have the liveliest street food tradition? And what should travelers not miss?

For me, the most exciting places are Turkey, Morocco and Syria. Egypt is exciting but you have to be wary because, of all the Mediterranean countries, it’s the least clean. In Turkey you have fantastic street food, like stuffed mussels. You buy them one by one—they cost nothing —and you use one shell to scoop the mussel and rice from the other shell. You stand around and say, “Yes, another one, another one.” I can have a dozen, two dozen at one sitting.

Syria is another country where the street food is great. You have the sandwiches like shawarma and falafel, and little butcher stalls where you have kebabs with hummous or a bit of salad. One of my most fun experiences was at a camel butcher in Damascus. I was passing by this area where there’s a lot of street food, and I stopped when I saw a real camel’s head hanging outside the butcher’s. I went in and asked him to make me kebabs. He suggested kefta (minced meat kebabs) because camel meat is a little tough.

Q: As for food safety, what precautions should a traveler take?

You have to be careful. You have to use your flair not only for the quality of the food but the cleanliness. I always look at the vendor to see if the stall is clean. In some countries, like Egypt, I would definitely not use the cutlery. They put the spoons in a glass of water between customers and you think, hmm, I’m going to die here. A set of cutlery is great to carry around. I don’t think you have to worry about plates because most of the time, you’re getting the food in bread.

Listen as Helou describes some of the more peculiar foods she has eaten on the street.