Montreal said no to street food in the 1960s. Too bad. Because the New York experience shows us to what extent the trucks that roam the city as well as the food stalls inject a dose of gourmet vitality into urban life. When will the Tremblay administration think about the subject?
You might think that THE food journalist of the magazine New Yorker hauls from country to country, from starred restaurant to starred restaurant, in search of the best oysters and the finest foie gras. Not at all.
Calvin Trillin would never go to a Michelin star by choice. For him, happiness is street food, street food.
“For me, it’s the dream way to eat,” explains the venerable journalist, interviewed recently. “No need to sit down formally for a long time. We choose what we want. We eat as we please. I love.”
He likes it so much that even if for decades he has systematically refused all invitations to be a judge in culinary or gastronomic events, this year he accepted that of the Vendy Awards in New York. Vendy as in vendors, the name given to the street vendors who populate the New York landscape more than ever.
Because if there is now a competition to crown the best street food, it is because this type of catering is becoming really very popular in the American metropolis. In fact, for two or three years, this universe has experienced a real explosion. High-end waffles, organic ice creams with grand cru chocolates, chic dumplings and reinvented schnitzels are now taking their place in the city alongside falafels and traditional halal rice-vegetable dishes.
Add to that a generous dose of Fermob tables and chairs – manufacturer of French metal park furniture – now arranged all over the place in increasingly pedestrianized public spaces, and you have a city where people like to eat more than ever. outside. Between business people glued to their cellphones, stressed pedestrians and taxis with howling horns, there are now people having picnics in the middle of Times Square, a few steps from Rockefeller Center or in the heart of Broadway. .
New York looks like an open-air cafeteria. And we like it.
Zach Brooks, who writes a blog all about where to eat a cool lunch in Midtown (midtownlunch.com), an area once known for its perennial boring deli and dingy salad bars, now spends a good chunk of his working hours. lunch to look for pearls among the stands on wheels and the kitchen vans that park at crucial crossroads. “For two or three years, I would say, it has become really central,” he explains. On its site, it has also installed an application that centralizes all the Twitter messages sent by the traveling trucks to announce where they have managed to park. Because much of the interest of these new sellers is in the quest. We don’t always find them, they move. We are looking for them. We discover them. And it feels like you’ve hit the jackpot.
Falafels with cookies
In New York City, Brooks explains, street food has always been around. “It’s a cheap way for immigrants to cook inexpensive food for other immigrants.” We have known the hot dogs and pretzels of immigrants from Eastern Europe in the last century. Now everywhere you can find combinations of rice and meat, with yogurt sauce and hot sauce. The dish is at the same time Indian, Pakistani, Bengali, a little Middle Eastern too. The plate, mostly prepared with hallal ingredients, has become a kind of common denominator. “In the evening, at midnight, there are endless lines,” said Brooks, referring to one of the more classic stops, the Halal Cart at the corner of 6th Avenue and 53rd Street. “Taxi drivers change shifts. They stop to eat. ”
But to all these classic stalls has been added a new generation of young restaurateurs, sometimes fresh out of cooking school and unable to have a place on the street given the excessively high prices in Manhattan. They bake cookies like Kim Ima, the theater lady turned pastry chef for Treats Truck, or Grant Di Mille, the former advertiser who now sells croissants stuffed with gianduja and other delicacies with his Street Sweets truck.
There are also the folks from Cravings, who offer dumplings, just like those from Rickshaw. For frying, you have to follow the Schnitzels and Things route, and for very classy ice cream, it is Van Leeuwen’s truck that you have to look for. And in the kitchen of Kwik Meal, there is a former Russian Tee Room.
“When I arrived in June 2007, there weren’t that many in our category,” recounts Kim Ima, whom she met during her day off in front of the Mud Truck coffee truck. But I arrived with my cookies and was very well accepted by the ice cream vendors, who didn’t see me as competition because I was offering something else.
“But you don’t improvise yourself as a street vendor,” she says. It’s much more complicated than you think. ”
And less profitable than you think, adds Zach Brooks, who is also wondering if the phenomenon of high-end sellers will last. “To make it work, you need a lot of traffic and little expense. The most successful salespeople are there for very long hours. Not the new ones. It’s much more difficult than you imagine. ”
That said, everyone agrees that there will still be street food in New York City, in one form or another. “It’s just so New York,” Kim laughs. It’s just so cool.
Some ideas for an outdoor bite
The classic
The Halal Cart, corner 6th Avenue and 53rd Street. So popular that some people copy his bags, the cooks’ yellow sweaters and his style in general. For the real experience, you have to go late at night. The line can then extend over a whole block. Important to note: during the day the real kiosk is on the southeast side and in the evening it is on the southwest. What do we eat there? The famous and indefinable rice dish, with lamb or chicken, sour cream or yogurt sauce, and hot sauce. You can also take the wrapped version: meat and sauce in a pita bread.
The cool Asian
New York Cravings does not have a fixed place, so you have to follow its movements on Twitter, from day to day. I found it on 38th, near Broadway. My favorite food: fried chicken and pork dumplings, which I then went to eat in the middle of Broadway, where the City has set up pedestrian zones with picnic tables. www.nyccravings.com
For good cookies
The Treats Truck, whose slogan is to serve delicious but not too fancy things. You also have to look for him on the website or on Twitter, because the truck is moving. Try: the caramel sandwich cookie. Kim, the cook, has an infectious smile. www.treatstruck.com
For waffles like in Belgium
Wafels and Dinges. Again, if we want to find it, we can look on the internet or on Twitter. But this excellent waffle iron – try the Bruges-style waffles without toppings, just with sugar – sometimes has permanent stands, in Madison Square Park or at Union Square Market. www.wafelsanddinges.com
For great burgers
The Shake Shack. It’s not a traveling counter, but this snack bar put together by the team of famous restaurateur Danny Meyer (Union Square Cafe, Eleven Madison Park) in the heart of Madison Square park, gives a good idea of what can be done very well with a simple stand in a park. They serve quality burgers, beer, high-end sundaes. There too, guaranteed queues.
For more last-minute information, go to www.midtownlunch.com, where all the comings and goings of trucks are centralized and where you can find the latest news on this moving world, filled, of course, with departures and departures. ‘arrivals. That said, there are street vendors in other areas of New York City, from SoHo to Park Slope in Brooklyn to Wall Street, another neighborhood with a high concentration of street food.
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