Where should I eat in Salvador Bahia, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

IPHAN's description is precise about what the registration covers. The ofício is the making and selling of comidas de baiana from a street stand, found mainly in Salvador, with the food prepared in dendê oil and tied to the worship of the orixás. The acarajé fritter itself originated in the Bight of Benin in West Africa and came to Brazil with enslaved Africans. Its name comes from the technique: feijão fradinho, the cowpea, ground in a stone mortar.

What goes inside and alongside is just as specified. The typical fillings IPHAN names are vatapá, caruru and dried shrimp, and the same stand will usually also sell abará, mingaus, lelê, cocadas, pé de moleque and other Afro-Brazilian dishes. Ordering acarajé with vatapá and caruru is therefore ordering the registered combination rather than a tourist version of it.

The religious dimension is not decoration. The dendê oil and the dishes are linked in IPHAN's own record to orixá worship, which is why the stands are concentrated where they are and why the practice was registered as a saber — a body of knowledge — rather than as a recipe.

The stand is the whole kitchen: a stone mortar for grinding the cowpeas, a pan of dendê oil at the front, and the vatapá and caruru in pots behind it. That arrangement, and the knowledge behind it, is what IPHAN registered in 2005 — not the fritter on its own.

The acarajé you eat in Salvador is covered by criterion (vi) of the city's World Heritage inscription as surely as the churches are. UNESCO cites the convergence of European, African and American Indian cultures between the 16th and 18th centuries as part of the property's value, and IPHAN traces the dish to the Bight of Benin and the Atlantic crossing. The stand on the corner is the inscription's own argument, served hot.

• Order it hot from the pan — Dendê-fried acarajé comes straight out of the oil, which is exactly the condition the CDC treats as safest.
• Ask for the registered fillings — Vatapá, caruru and dried shrimp are the 3 IPHAN names, and the dried shrimp is the one most often left out.
• Try the second menu — Abará, mingaus, lelê, cocadas and pé de moleque are all on IPHAN's list of what the same stands sell.

Two of the registered fillings sit awkwardly with the CDC's risk guidance, and it is worth knowing which. Raw or undercooked shellfish is on the higher-risk list, so dried shrimp is best taken from a stand with visible turnover, and the CDC notes that street vendors with poor refrigeration or untrained staff raise risk while food served fully cooked and hot is safest. Uncooked vegetables, raw or unpeeled fruit and unpasteurized juice are also on the higher-risk list, and tap water may be unsafe for ice and food preparation as well as drinking. Getting around to the stands has its own constraint: the US Department of State advises its own employees in Brazil not to use municipal buses because of the risk of robbery and assault.

The Salvador Bahia things-to-do answer in this group sets out what UNESCO inscribed and where the capoeira roda fits, and the when-to-visit answer gives the rainfall normals for the months the street stands are busiest.