NY street vendors

October 8, 2006

Weekend in New York

Street Vendors: International Cuisine, à la Cart

By SETH KUGEL

THE line for the $5 halal chicken or lamb platters, with the magical white sauce, at the corner of 53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas stretched to 60 people one recent Saturday night, which is what happens when your street cart has a Web site (www.53rdand6th.com). People drive in from New Jersey to eat there, and guests at the Hilton New York hotel across the street finally give in and wait in line, just to see what the fuss is all about.

Not every food vendor in the city inspires that kind of devotion. But many who do will compete for the title of the city’s best street vendor in the second annual Vendy Awards. The event, to be held on Oct. 22, is a fine reason to come to the city for the weekend. Tickets are $50 and $100, including food, beer and wine, and the winner comes away with the top prize: the coveted golden hot dog. (O.K., it’s just a silver cup.)

Even if you can’t make the Vendys, you can easily spend a whole weekend in Manhattan eating on the street instead of sitting down in restaurants or shopping in the city’s overpriced delis (a $6 package of Oreos, anyone?).

First, there is the inevitable hot dog cart, so standardized in its toppings that it sometimes seems that the 17th-century Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant must have decreed that every citizen had the right to free onion sauce and sauerkraut with frankfurters. But man cannot live on hot dogs and buns alone, and though many celebrated Midtown food vendors close up shop when the lunch hordes disappear for the weekend, farther downtown you’ll find plenty of variety.

SoHo is a good spot for brunch, starting with the red Dean & DeLuca Coffee Shack on Prince Street. They sell pastries — creative takes on brownies and doughnuts, most $2.50 to $3.50 — and even give a nod to history by offering seltzer-milk-and-chocolate egg creams, an old-time New York treat; even so, the Dodgers still won’t be returning to Brooklyn.

The shack is not far from the crepe cart run by Zekria Naimi, whose stand may have suspect credentials as a genuine outpost of French cuisine, but will do if you’re in more of a Nutella-and-banana mood than in a ketchup-and-mustard mood. Most crepes are about $4 or $5.

One of the latest welcome additions to the weekend street-food scene is El Ídolo’s taco truck on the edge of Chelsea, at 14th Street and Eighth Avenue. Its owner owns two trucks that operate out of Corona, Queens, but started coming into Manhattan about nine months ago, apparently deciding that if you can’t bring the customer to the taco (it’s a bit of a haul on the No. 7 train), then bring the taco to the customer. And they do, late at night, giving the more upscale La Esquina in NoLIta (disqualified from street vendor status by its two adjoining restaurants, but with a taco stand that qualifies in spirit) a run for its money.

The English side of Ídolo’s taco truck menu has some imperfect translations, but no matter. In case you’re wondering, a “goat beef” taco is not made from a mutant farm animal, it’s a mistranslation of “goat meat.” Forgive the error, and order one ($2).

Around Canal Street in Chinatown, $1.50 coconuts hacked open for their refreshing milk abound, and vendors sell Ping-Pong-ball-size wafflelike cakes for cheap. They’re 15 for $1 at the heavily trafficked corner of Canal and Mulberry.

A more upscale minicake gets filled with hot vanilla cream before your very eyes under the covered market known as Little Chinatown, where $3 gets you a dozen.

Xing Wang Chinese Food is the Chinese street version of the McDonald’s dollar menu — three mini-egg rolls, lo mein, a stick of spongy fish balls and fried rice all go for a dollar.

A bit farther down Canal, a stand selling fresh orange juice looks out of place, but there it is, manned by a wise-guy vendor who claims that his name is Mo, and that his father started the stand in the 1980’s. It could be so, but then again, in true New York City fashion, he also claims to have a special price just for you.

If 15 minicakes for a dollar seems like a rip-off, head over to east Chinatown, an area less frequented by tourists. There, Shao P. Chen sells them at 20 for a dollar from the corner of Bowery and Grand Street.

At the same corner, a restaurant called Quickly sells an astounding variety of flavored bubble teas and slushes through its window. The slush flavors range from almond to litchi to sour plum, and the bubble tea glowing with tapioca pearls has a similar range of flavors.

That may be enough for one weekend of eating, but it does not take into account weekday legends like Rolf Babiel, last year’s Vendy winner, who sells German bratwurst on West 54th between Avenue of the Americas and Fifth Avenue, or the dosa man of Washington Square Park.

Nor does it count the taco truck on 96th Street and Broadway and the Dominican and Mexican street vendors selling tamales, mangoes, sweet bean soup and sugar cane juice in Washington Heights.

As for the street-food nirvana known as the borough of Queens, save that for your next trip. But you had better set aside a whole month.

The Details

The Vendy Awards take place on Oct. 22 at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Second Avenue and 10th Street, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 and $100, and include food from the vendors as well as beer, wine and soda. For more information and to order tickets, see www.streetvendor.org.

The famous halal truck is on the northeast corner of 53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas from about 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. every day.

The Dean & DeLuca Coffee Shack is on Prince Street just east of Mercer Street in SoHo, from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on weekends (weekdays from about 6:30 a.m.).

Zekria Naimi’s crepe cart is on Prince Street just east of Broadway in SoHo. Weekends only, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

El Ídolo taco truck is usually stationed on one of the corners of 14th Street and Eighth Avenue, open from about 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Xing Wang Chinese Food is on the north side of Canal Street at Baxter Street.

Little Chinatown is at the northeast corner of Canal and Lafayette Streets. For the cream-filled cakes, enter on Lafayette.

Mo’s juice stand, if his name is Mo, is on the north side of Canal Street between Broadway and Mercer Street.

Shao P. Chen’s minicake stand is at the southeast corner of the Bowery and Grand Street, and the Quickly bubble tea shop is at 237B Grand Street; 212-431-0998.