Small fried fish were a street food in ancient Greece,[SUP]
[4][/SUP] although
Theophrastus held the custom of street food in low regard.[SUP]
[5][/SUP] Evidence of a large number of street food vendors were discovered during the excavation of Pompeii.[SUP]
[6][/SUP] Street food was widely utilized by poor urban residents of ancient Rome whose tenement homes did not have ovens or hearths,[SUP]
[7][/SUP] with chickpea soup being one of the common meals,[SUP]
[8][/SUP] along with bread and grain paste.[SUP]
[9][/SUP] In ancient China, where street foods generally catered to the poor, wealthy residents would send servants to buy street foods and bring meals back for their masters to eat in their homes.[SUP]
[7][/SUP]
A traveling Florentine reported in the late 1300s that in Cairo, people carried picnic cloths made of raw hide to spread on the streets and eat their meals of lamb kebabs, rice and fritters that they had purchased from street vendors.[SUP]
[10][/SUP] In Renaissance Turkey, many crossroads saw vendors selling "fragrant bites of hot meat", including chicken and lamb that had been spit roasted.[SUP]
[11][/SUP]
Aztec marketplaces had vendors that sold beverages such as
atolli ("a gruel made from maize dough"), almost 50 types of tamales (with ingredients that ranged from the meat of turkey, rabbit, gopher, frog, and fish to fruits, eggs, and maize flowers),[SUP]
[12][/SUP] as well as insects and stews