In case you haven’t counted them all, New York City has 4,235 licensed food carts and food trucks. That’s in addition to around another 8,000 to 10,000 unlicensed vendors, according to the Urban Justice Center’s Street Vendor Project, which wants the City Council to allow even more permits.

But enough’s enough! The malodorous menaces clog up enough city streets and spew too many discordant scents into New York’s already pungent air.

Unlike real restaurants, street-food sellers don’t have to post Department of Health letter grades. They make sidewalks near-impassable on parts of Sixth Avenue, West 46th Street between Fifth and Sixth, and on Broadway south of Fulton Street.

They siphon business from legitimate brick-and-mortar eateries — and serve much of the worst, albeit cheap, food in town.

Certain culinary sages think street food is the healthiest thing for the city’s eating scene since chefs discovered greenmarkets. The great Anthony Bourdain, host of CNN’s “Parts Unknown” and a vocal food-truck lover, was recently part of a campaign video urging the City Council to nearly double the number of permits for food carts and food trucks from today’s 4,235 — the limit since 1983 — to 8,000 by 2023.

“There is nothing more vital to a … city’s health than good street food and more of it,” Bourdain says in the video. “More permits, not less.”

I have to disagree, although I get a kick out of watching rich Wall Street guys stand in the cold for 20 minutes to buy lukewarm tacos. Most of what’s cooked and sold on the street is meh at best. But the most ordinary (or worse) grub causes normally sane critics to swoon when it’s served out of a truck. DiSO’s Italian Sandwich Society on West 48th Street has been hailed by the Food Network, SeriousEats.com and WCBS/Channel 2. But on a recent visit, the grilled chicken on the Frankie Fingers sandwich was the generic, rubber-like poultry slab common to many a deli salad bar — with the added bonus of a 15-minute wait in the cold.

Even the best carts and trucks are less predictable than the most erratic indoor eatery. Whiting, the cheap, codlike fish that I craved as a child, was Michelin-worthy at Kim’s Aunt’s almost-famous cart on West 46th Street one afternoon. The next time, it was fried to cinders and full of bones — unfit to serve a starving cat.

The most ordinary (or worse) grub causes normally sane critics to swoon when it’s served out of a truck.

There are exceptions. Count me among the many fans of Jackson Heights’ Colombian-born “Arepa Lady,” German-born Rolf Babiel’s Hallo Berlin cart in Midtown and (some) halal vendors all over the map.

When I chance upon the rare, great street meal, like sensationally spiced lamb and chicken kati rolls at Shaheen Malik’s Biryani House cart at Broadway and Cedar Street, I feel like I won the jackpot: just $5.95 for both rolls!

But much of the worship of just about anything served on the street is a joke. Two years ago, BuzzFeed touted “19 New York Street Foods That Will Change Your Life.” Among them was a common chicken taco from Mexican chain Calexico. Get a life, dudes!

Why do sophisticated New Yorkers crave street food that usually ranges from mediocre to vile?

Since Bourdain first romanticized it on TV, street food has become the Holy Grail of gallivanting chefs who prowl the Third World in search of obscure, peasant-wrapped dumplings before bedding down for the night in five-star hotels.

To true believers, street food stands for authenticity, diversity and solidarity with the masses — whether of impoverished Ecuador or wealthy Hong Kong. Bourdain’s great and deserved popularity infected New Yorkers with a craving to track down their own favorite street epiphanies.

But, agh — the flies, bird droppings and unpalatables you can’t see. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene punishes indoor eateries for hand-wash signs that are an inch too far from the sink. Yet it doesn’t issue letter grades to street vendors — such as the Midtown guy who was caught by a TV crew some years ago wiping down wet hot dogs with the napkin he’d used to blow his nose. Every cart’s supposed to be inspected once a year, but what good is that if we don’t know the results?

Even when the carts look clean, who knows what you’ll imbibe in the alfresco environment?

Even when the carts look clean, who knows what you’ll imbibe in the alfresco environment? As much as I love María Piedad Cano’s luscious corn arepas, I prefer enjoying them in her tiny four-wall cafe, rather than amid unknown falling debris from the 7 train overhead.

The new Mad magazine has a cartoon spread on food trucks. One shows a truck using an oil leak to cook french fries. (The satirical mag’s offices just happen to be on a Sixth Avenue block full of food vans.) It’s good for laughs, but the issue’s serious.

A proposal to hang letter grades on street vendors was recently introduced in the City Council, separately from the one to allow more permits.

Street Vendor Project director Sean Basinski says it’s unclear when either will come up for a vote. “It’s been four months since the hearing” on increasing the number of permits, he said. “And we don’t know what’s become of it.”

He says that, ultimately, both proposals might be combined “into one bill called the Vendor Modernization Act.”

OK. Bringing order to a lawless industry is fine. But better yet to keep our culinary adventures indoors — and take our sidewalks back.