The 2025 World Food Photography Awards Exhibit Stars Street Vendors Around The Globe

There's something special about street food that cannot be replicated inside a restaurant. Maybe it's the spontaneous decision about what to order, or the personal connection we often develop with our favorite vendors, who soon know us by name. This holiday season, New York City's Museum of Food and Drink is celebrating photography that stars street food vendors from around the globe.

The selection of photos was curated together with the World Food Photography Awards and will be showcased between December 2, 2025, and January 11, 2026. You can see it all day long in the lobby of Empire Stores, at 55 Water Street in Brooklyn. The showcase is totally free, so you can pop in for a glance after filling your belly with unique New York foods everybody needs to try.

Because the World Food Photography Awards are based in the United Kingdom, the photos have never been displayed in the United States before. The Awards accept both professional and amateur photography, so you will find a mixture of images capturing street vendors through different cultural and personal lenses.

"Street food is culture," pointedly states the Museum of Food and Drink on its website. It's a simple statement with a lot of gravitas, one that's instantly noticed by looking at some of the photographs that are on display. A lone vendor by the ocean tending to his cart under an old umbrella that's still doing its job despite looking somewhat shabby. A man holding a massive wooden frame on his shoulder, with cotton candy stacked all over it. Somebody throwing dough high up in the sky with a joyous smile as the smell of food almost visibly surrounds him.

To the onlookers, these photos represent the beauty of street food. But to the subjects of the photos, street food represents livelihood. One of the displayed photographs showcases an ice cream vendor in India, where some have pivoted to selling ice cream in times of water scarcity — if you didn't know, most of the world's dairy comes from India. When you're traveling, it's impossible to say you have immersed yourself in the local culture if you haven't tried the street food, spoken with the vendors, and heard their stories.

The photography showcase was curated to complement MOFAD's brand new exhibition titled Street Food City, which honors New York City's diverse street food landscape. No city does street food like NYC. It's a blend of cultures in and of itself, allowing you to grab a Middle Eastern kebab and Chinese dumplings just a few blocks apart. Aside from celebrating the vendors and the iconic foods they serve, the exhibition will also be "tracing the challenges faced by street food entrepreneurs of the past to today's fight for vendor rights," per MOFAD.

The Street Food City exhibition opens on December 6, 2025, at the same address as the photography showcase, except it's taking place on the second floor. You'll be able to see it from Thursday to Sunday, 12 p.m to 6 p.m. Tickets are selling at $17, with discount options for children, veterans, seniors, and other select groups. The Museum of Food and Drink is one of the museums every food lover should visit at least once, so this is a great chance to cross that off the foodie bucket list.