Let the Celebration Begin
STREET MEET
turns 19 this October, but that just means the 20th anniversary celebration is going to last all year long. BY BARRY KAUFMAN
If you’re going to talk about the history of Street Meet, the north-end standby serving “sidewalk sandwiches from America’s favorite street corners,” you could go back 19 years to when they first opened in Port Royal Plaza. In those days before the culinary world had really started to embrace elevated tavern fare, the concept behind Street Meet was a bit tricky for folks to wrap their heads around at first. “The name was always a bit confusing, but it’s old slang for street vendor food,” said chef Carey Basciano. “What we wanted to do was go back to 1934 and do this regional American bar food from scratch… we were doing it before the 16
TASTEOFHILTONHEAD.COM
•
PHOTOS BY ROB KAUFMAN
Food Network. Now people plan their whole vacations around that.” So you can go back 19 years to when they opened, but to truly grasp the concept you have to go back a century or so, back to when the delicious simplicity of street food was the lifeblood of the working class. Before mammoth restaurant chains learned to process food to within an inch of its life, each region of the country had its own culinary language, written in burgers and bratwursts and sandwiches. Immigrants from all over the world brought their own traditions, recreating their home country’s menus with a new world accent. “Back then, American food was
homemade, regional and ethnic… then it became synonymous with fast food and got a bad reputation,” explained Basciano. With Street Meet, they brought this food back to its roots. “We’re doing all of it in house and telling the story behind it.” So far, we’ve gone back a century to explain the appeal of Street Meet’s inspired menu. But to truly understand what sets it apart as a restaurant, and has helped it develop such a huge following, we’re going to have to take another trip to the past. This time, to the 1970s, when U.S. Steel said its goodbyes to the city of Cleveland. With the steel belt eroding into the rust belt, the city’s population,