Bari's most famous street snack is a slice of fried polenta sold for small change from a folding table. The sgagliozza has no menu, no branding and no fixed address beyond the corner where the fryer stands. It survives because the old town never industrialised its appetite. Bari Vecchia occupies a limestone spur between two harbours, its streets deliberately narrow and crooked to break the wind and confuse raiders. The plan is medieval; the habits are older. Norman rulers built the Basilica di San Nicola here from 1087 to house relics taken from Myra, and pilgrims have arrived ever since, hungry after the crossing from the Adriatic. Trade did the rest. Wheat from the Tavoliere, oil from the Murgia, almonds, salt, octopus from the port below the Muraglia sea wall. A bari street food walking tour moves through the same supply lines that fed Crusader fleets, only compressed into a few hundred metres of alley. What is served reflects that geography with unusual honesty. Focaccia barese carries tomato and olive pressed into semolina dough. Panzerotti are fried, not baked, because frying was faster and cheaper in a courtyard. Orecchiette are still shaped by thumb on wooden boards along Strada Arco Basso, where women work in doorways in full view of the street. Riso patate e cozze layers rice, potato and mussels in a single dish, a compromise between land and sea that no restaurant invented. The old town matters today because the doorways remain occupied. Restoration since the 1990s cleaned the facades of Piazza Mercantile and reopened the Cattedrale di San Sabino, but it did not evict the kitchens. Guided food walks and Bari Vecchia walking tours work as introductions to a place that rewards being read closely: the Colonna della Giustizia where debtors were once shamed, the Swabian castle raised by Frederick II, the fish market at the Molo San Nicola where catch is cleaned on stone. Architecture here is domestic rather than grand. Ground floors open directly onto the paving. Stairs climb outside the walls. Laundry crosses overhead between buildings barely three metres apart. The result is a city that cooks in public, which is why a bari street food walking tour reads less like a tasting menu and more like a walk through someone's working day. The streets and squares themselves cost nothing to enter — 0 EUR — and remain open every day, 00:00–23:59, though the shutters that matter follow the bakers' hours, not the clock's.