The allure of street food for people who didn’t grow up in a place where it flourished is largely psychological. For tourists it’s not just the affordable, practical, utilitarian way of feeding oneself that it is for locals, but a cheap and easy way to feel like you belong—or at least identify—with a foreign culture at its realest. Somehow one is convinced this food tastes best in the open heat and exhaust of a thrumming metropolis.
Of the five vendors established in Fulton Galley, she’s the only one who, apart from a couple stages, has never worked in a professional kitchen (much less on a sidewalk). But her sous chef Dylan Heath, formerly of Cafe Marie-Jeanne and Cellar Door Provisions, has, and together they’re executing a relatively specialized and concise menu that Sriratana says is “roughly two-thirds Isan.”
In the realm of fried bites Sriratana’s rotating vegan fritter option by rights ought to be Pink Salt’s other major crowd-pleaser: recently, shredded nests of zucchini and makrut lime leaf, fried in a green-curry-infused rice-flour batter and dusted with dehydrated lime powder.
1115 W. Fulton pinksaltchicago
