2009 Vendy Award Finalists Announced!
The finalists for the 2009 Vendy Awards have been announced, and Midtown Lunchers should recognize at least 3 out of 5 of the nominees! (I can’t get too excited because I’m a judge this year, and have to be completely impartial. But that doesn’t mean you can’t jump up and down, and do a dance…) It looks like the Biryani Cart (on 46th & 6th) will get another chance to take home the top prize (last year they won People’s Choice), King of Falafel “Freddie Zeidaies” will represent Queens, Rickshaw Dumpling Truck has got the hipster trucks covered this year, Jamaican Dutchy (on 51st and 7th) makes their first appearance, and the Country Boys/Martinez Taco Truck will be doing the Red Hook Ball Field vendors proud (last year Rafael Soler got to show off his fantastic pupusas.)
For those who are unfamiliar with the Vendy Awards, it’s pretty much the Oscars of the street food world. It’s put on by the Street Vendor Project, a non profit organization that advocates for vendors, and each year features 5 nominated vendors in a street food cookoff! There also is the newly added dessert category (in its second year), which lets vendors like the Dessert Truck and Treats Truck (last year’s People’s Choice Award) show off their wares. Ticket price includes plates of food from all the vendors, and all the proceeds from the event go to benefit the SVP. Judges pick the winners, but attendees get to vote for their favorites- with the winners receiving the coveted “People’s Choice Award”.
Each of this year’s nominated vendors has their own special video. Check out the Midtown ones, and more about the event, after the jump…
You can view all the videos, read about all the nominees, plus buy tickets for the event on the official Vendy Awards Website. (But it will definitely sell out so don’t wait until the last minute.) Plus there are still more announcements to come… including the Dessert Nominees, new judges, and more. Follow their Twitter account to be the first to know.
Congrats to all this year’s nominees!
Posted: 8:44 am, August 16th, 2009 under Vendy Awards.
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42 Comments
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LET’S GO RICKSHAW!!!
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“Vendy Awards”??
Are you folks REALLY serious?
Maybe a jog in your Central Park would help take your mind off of your obvious ‘death wish’ — stuffing your gullet with gawd-knows-what-kind-of-crap from ‘FOOD CARTS’.
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To those of us who are not flaming imbeciles and are actually interested in MTL, my one question is this: by all accounts, Rickshaw Dumpling does not serve good product, so who did they bribe to become a finalist?
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Agree w/Fred. Rickshaw totally overcharges and under delivers – they definitely don’t belong in the big league’s with the Biryani cart and Jamaican Dutchy.
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Hey where is the other finalist youtube clips ? or they have to be a midtown carts to be on the list ??
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Yeah, don’t get Rickshaw. Go Jamaican Dutchy!
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Rickshaw???!?!?!? Barf!!!
I hope Freddie’s wins, he’s the best out of this group despite being in queens.
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yay because I also voted for Jamaican Dutchy. also super excited about the taco truck because it’d be my first taste of red hook bp. also awesome is the fact that j.torres and p*ong are on the panel. high brow palates critiquing lowbrow food will be interesting.
also agreed that rickshaw’s seems like the dark horse in this race.
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Not impressed by Rickshaw either. I had their overpriced duck dumplings two weekends ago. They’re just okay. Nothing special.
A better choice for restaurant-into-a cart would be Hallo Berlin.
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Obviously they’re trying to fill a quota for diversity… gotta have an Indian cart, one Asian cart, one Latino cart, and one West Indian/Jamaican cart.
Affirmative action is always controversial, but at least include better representation… what about Kim’s Aunt Kitchen cart or a (glorious) return of the Happy Well Being cart?
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Rickshaw? Why? Their dumplings make me so sad. What is it? $6 for 5 not-so-great dumplings or other such ridiculousness?
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@ chris6s, i was just thinking that too. i don’t think the drawing was 100% democratic because i can’t fathom more people would vote for rickshaw’s than any other cart in nyc.
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If the nominations are baloney, than the award is meaningless.
That is obviously the case here.
Sorry Zach. I call shenanigans and unless there’s some clarity on the nomination process, this is a bullshit award.
I also wonder where those quotes came from. I tried asking the Google and he had never seen or heard any of them. So who, exactly, said
“Their dumplings are the best I’ve ever had – by far. I will travel far and wide to eat their delicious dumplings – I dream about the Thai chicken ones!”
to whom, and why?
Baloney nominations, quotes of unexplained provenance, nothing on the page about the selection process. This is marketing hype with little regard for substance. Blah.
A little freakin integrity, please.
(Falafel cart? Hello, Moshe’s kicks everyone’s ass and everyone knows it.)
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Did we really need Biryani Cart again? It’s good food, and they won an award last year, but why not let another cart have its chance to shine?
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hi everyone- we’re sorry some of you are upset/confused about the rickshaw truck being selected as a finalist for the vendys…. the rickshaw truck was actually one of the most nominated carts/trucks on the streets, so while you may not believe it’s one of the best out there, MANY people in the city apparently love it. you’re all passionate about food – it’s up to you guys to nominate your favorites and to encourage your friends to do the same.
the vendys are going to be great this year, out at the queens museum – hopefully you’ll all still come out and support street food in the city.
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I want to echo the sentoments above that the Vendys are now clearly a SHAM! (Polite euphemism for ‘bullsh@**##$!’)
Ricksha is far fromt he best cart dumpling, and much farther from the best cart food in the city. Serious Eats or whoever is handling the Vendys has bveen corrupted. This is total BS. I was thinking of finally attnnding this year, but now I’ll definitely pass. It’s a total fraud.
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‘The real’ Dan Cohen–i don’t believe you. If rickshaw is a finalist, you need to change the voting criteria. Buit no way did that sub-par cart make a citywide ‘best’ list. No way.
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@stevenp: you might not believe it, but there are lots of people in this city – many of whom don’t necessarily post on midtown lunch and/or share the opinions of posters on midtown lunch. rickshaw was one of the most nominated carts out there…. people clearly like ‘em. a lot. hopefully you can look past rickshaw’s presence and join us on 9/26 for a great street food event. you don’t have to eat the dumplings; take down some tacos, jerk chicken, katy rolls and falafel if you’d prefer. and vote for one of those for the people’s taste….
also, the vendy awards are put on by the street vendor project (www.streetvendor.org), the not-for-profit that helps make sure that there is a vibrant street food culture in the city by advocating for and supporting street vendors’ rights.
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Eh, it’s not hard to believe that Rickshaw would be better at drumming up shill votes. I guess people don’t always vote rationally… just look at the 2000 and 2004 POTUS elections. :)
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“you might not believe it but there are lots of people in the city”
Did you guys ever notice that ’snark’ seems to be the prevailing tone among PR people in this city? Thanks for bringing that unique dialect here, Dan. Just what ML was missing.
I love the ‘non-response to a question that also carries an insult.’ That shows up in more PR responses than not. Nicely done, Dan. ML readers the most enthusiastic cart consumers out there. Tell us again how stupid we are? Care to alienate some more of some of the biggest cart eaters out there?
I’ll be blunt: Hey, Dan, did you know there’s more places to discuss food than Midtown Lunch? And guess what? They all think Rickshaw Dumplings sucks, too.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/rickshaw-dumpling-truck-new-york
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/596338
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/583261
Vendy Award. Double Blah.
(BTW, I actually like them more than most seem to. But they still are just not very good.)
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I have disagreed with others’ opinions regarding food preferences, but I’ll also trust my own taste buds to some degree and can usually see where differences arise. It is still INCOMPREHENSIBLE that RT has so many fans and is a top (legitimate) vote-getter. No way. My tastes are not that far off. And for more objective evidence, the RT has never been very busy when I’ve seen it at lunchtime. Where are all these RT fanatics? Where are the lines for one of NYC’s favorite trucks? Not at RT, for sure.
No’ I will not patronize thi vent until the hard-working SVP works a little harder a spotting blatant shills. And you, sir, despite being ‘real,’ have ZERO credibility here.
Zach, I’m sure you’ll post after the event to let us know if the RT was even in the same league as the other finallists.
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@(angry)mikeNYC: you’ve clearly got the snark covered, so i’ll leave that alone. and not sure where the insult was – none was intended – but i’ll leave that be, as well.
all i’m saying is that there there are tons of people in the city who eat street food – and not all of them share their opinions on websites.
it seems like the first sentence in this post provided by (angry)mikeNYC might sum up the rickshaw debate quite nicely: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/583261#4281282
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What controls if any were put in place to ensure folks could not just vote a hundred (a thousand, ten thousand, etc) times if they wanted to? This looks very much like the fix was in, and I don’t doubt that Rickshaw will display ‘2009 Vendy Award Finalist” signage on their truck and in other media regardless of the outcome of the actual event
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I still haven’t seen a clear explanation of how these finalists were selected. And I do mean “selected” NOT “elected”
The web site says people sent in suggestions and then…maybe some stuff happens….and, suddenly there appears finalists. (I paraphrase, of course.)
It seems a few details were left out. Care to clarify the black box process involved there?
Where did suggestions come from? You seem to say there are opinions beyond blogs and they matter. OK, fine, for all those critical non-internet food blogging manhattan worker/eater votes, what were the non-internet methods by which THEIR suggestions were captured?
Oh, that post you referenced, that seems to say opinions are divided? It was a reply to this one, which, it seems, reflects the more general view, the one far more often expressed:
“Absolutely! Among the worst dumplings I’ve tasted.”
face it: You guys have a so-so vendor with a fairly large downtown-denizen Q-score. The name is known, but the product is not very good. And now you’re going to lash out with a personal attack at each and every legit critic who holds a valid point. Or, conversely, point to some vague horde of non-internet blogging Rickshaw lovers out there.
You have egg on your face and so does this whole ‘award’ and you don’t know what to do about it.
I also think the only reason your failure to include Moshe’s falafel (huh!?)isn’t getting more criticism is because your inclusion of Rickshaw is so egregious. But that’s just another angry opinion from a guy who reads food blogs, and so must not matter.
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Wow. When Chowhounders concur with my (admittedly) pedstrian tastes, I know I’m not off-base! I have just read about 20 negative opinions of RT, and 2 lukewarm positive ones. Again, – ask: which of the 5 Vendy finalists never suffers from long lines or sellouts? If the SVP lets RT in as a finalist, it too will be a ’sellout.’
And ‘real’ Dan, your weak attmpts at trying to spin the RT nomination as valid are making you look *very* bad. Your ‘hipster’(???)/multi-location explanations don’t mesh with the consistent lack of real praise for RT on *any* site discussing local food carts. (And here’s a clue: hipsters *love* to expound on their weighty opinions online.)
The SVP was suckered by a shill campaign. And won’t admit it. Sad. But enough to keep me home.
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Eh, you guys need to cool it with the personal attacks. At the end of the day, Dan is just trying to provide a public service.
Yes it’s unfair that better vendors didn’t get a chance to compete, but I guess there’s always next year.
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Wow, check out Ed Levine and the Serious Easts crew:
http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2009/08/announcing-the-2009-vendy-award-finalists.html
Similar befuddlement around the Rickshaw Dimpling selection.
BUT, I learned something new from that thread, and now I’m stepping it up. If I’m wrong someone let me know:
This is a hopelessly conflicted ‘award’ Anita Lo was a judge LAST YEAR and suddenly her truck makes the awards THIS YEAR? When NO ONE, anywhere, seems to think they deserve it?
This is a blatant attempt to bolster one previous judges’ business by making them a ‘finalist’ this year.
This is a SCAM and completely WRONG.
You can stop saying this Vendy award is to help poor cart vendors now. We get what this part of it is all about. It looks like it’s cheating the finalists list to help an obvious insider.
Sorry, but I think you all should be ashamed of yourselves. Good, bad or orgasmic, this woman’s dumplings have no business in this event.
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As I type this, I’m eating Freddy’s fantastic chicken and rice platter. I really hope he wins the Vendy this year, regardless of all the drama surrounding the event.
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Goats, let me buy you yet another beer/pitcher on thursdsay. You too Mike. I wasn’t even aware of the ‘Anita connection.’ Something smells really bad here. Are previous judges awarded a thousand votes or something? For shame.
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Could be a scam, or it could be that the dude has a lot of friends and asked them all to go onto the intarwebs and vote for him. Or maybe the dude is handy with programming and wrote a web bot to constantly vote for him.
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She wasn’t all that impressive on Top Chef Masters. Looked like she was over her head the whole time.
I’ll be there Thursday (Thor’s Day). I’ll be the new guy.
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HEY GUYS, I don’t buy expensive dumplings for obvious reasons, so I can only imagine what Rickshaw tastes like, but let’s be honest here. Rickshaw is still in business. Period. Clearly there are people out there who like them enough to keep them afloat in the dollar bills, maybe those people don’t have internet, I don’t know, but they aren’t posting to ML or Yelp or whatever other sites were posted up there.
Seriously, rigged or not, get over it, Zach is one of the judges, I trust his tastes (minus a few things here and there that one of us has liked and the other has not), and trust that Rickshaw won’t win, regardless of whether it’s an honest nomination or a fraudulent one.
NOW CAN WE GET BACK TO THE IMPORTANT MATTER AT HAND – FOOD???
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Hi, this is Sean from the Street Vendor Project.
I have no opinion on Rickshaw, because I’ve never tried their dumplings, but I will testify to the integrity of the Vendy Awards. As Dan wrote, the finalists are determined solely by nominations from the general public, as they have always been. The final winner is determined by our team of judges who fill out score cards at the event.
If you are not happy with the finalists, all I can do is encourage you to nominate your favorite vendor next year. Nominations open up in June.
Can anyone game the system? While some savvy vendors have started asking their customers to nominate them (something we encourage), we have a Russian software guy who analyzes the data to make sure nobody stuffs the ballot box.
The only people we disqualify are prior Vendy Award winners. Briyani Cart won the People’s Taste Award last year, but did not win the Vendy Cup (Calexico did), so Meru can return. Rolf Babiel from Hallo Berlin won the Vendy in 2005 and is no longer eligible.
The comments you see beside the finalists are real comments that people sent along with their nominations. We have a box on the nominations page for that very purpose.
The Vendy Awards always stir strong feelings in people, which is a sign of how much New Yorkers love their street food. Our goal is to bring recognition and respect to all NYC street vendors. Hope to see you on September 26th!
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Odd, I thought Anita did well on TC:M. She did well enough to make the final 4…
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“Russian software guy” who “analyzes the data”.
Sean threw a softball there. Can’t wait to see some of these replies (wayne, where are you, you’re quiet today).
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“we have a Russian software guy who analyzes the data to make sure nobody stuffs the ballot box.”
Russian??? Wouldn’t someone from Florida be a better specialist at election fraud?
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Yvo, the fact that RT made it to the Vendys this year (and they *will* parade that fact on their truck loud and clear, wait and see) means that another MORE WORTHY vendor won’t get a chance to legitimately compete.
Do you really think that a foodcart with an overwhelming number of bad reviews online is actually one of the TOP 5 in NYC? I don’t. And this ‘Anita’ connection further clouds the issuer.I’ve had a LOT of cart food here in the city. I have several ‘go-to’ places. I haven’t even been to many of the highly-regarded ones mentioned on *many* online sites. But I won’t be going back to RT. Twice was enough. (I gave them a second chance.)
The consistent lack of any line at RT should be an objective clue. NYC’s best foodcarts should often have long lines at mealtimes.
And, not sure if it was serious or not, but ironically I do know more than I want to asbout ‘Russian programmers’! (For real.) Does not instill confidence.
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I’m going to be that little guy who waves a little “yay Rickshaw!” flag…
Zach made a good point. Sure, their dumplings are a little pricey, it’s an offshoot of a restaurant, and the main chef was a judge last year, but to be quite honest, The Street Vendor Project wouldn’t want to fudge election results, especially since this competition is about the carts that juggle making the best food they can while staying competitive with Joe Hot Dog Cart and Jane Kebab Roll.
Simply boycotting this event is the wrong thing to do; the other carts are formidable and VERY respectable institutions (e.g.: the Dutchy cart’s plan to feed 10 people a day). Don’t let these guys suffer.
Let the RT be happy they made the Vendys; whether or not it was fixed, it’s up to the judges (we’re counting on you, Zach) to make the right decision.
(that being said, go Rickshaw! [covers head from tomatoes thrown by angry mob])
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Stevenp, ever seen American Idol? “unworthy” contestants get pretty far due to “popularity” all the time. Popularity doesn’t get them the prize though (though last season where the underdog won over the guy who had more talent may say the opposite). Talent usually does win out. ( though I would admit that the initial pool of “talent” is very likely influenced by the producers of the show, I just don’t see the SVP being orchestrated enough or would care enough in this case. )
In the end, the nominations were just a popularity contest. It’s not like the Vendy Knights scoured the kingdom for the most worthy of contestants, only to have the some evil stepmother’s favorite peddler hand picked to participate while the protagonists of your favorite carts are forced by the wayside (”clean the grill cinderelly”, “make the whitesauce cinderelly”).
I doubt there’s a conspiracy (”don’t attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”), and I doubt the system is rigged (though I have written my fair share of voting bots).
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Exactly, @adamprato! Let’s just make sure Zach doesn’t get attacked by Anita in a dumpling costume armed with a bat…
ZB: I vote for RDT!
RockCenter: Um, hey Zach, what happened to your eye?(pause)
ZB: I fell down the stairs…
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[...] and the Big, Gay, Ice Cream Truck, which is obviously worth seeking out. Complete list of finalists here. [via Midtown [...]
Holly shit! OMG OMG!!
Martinez Taco Truck- Fernando & Jolanda Martinez!!!
They are my go-to truck at Red Hook! I’ve been going to them for 3+ years now!
(Doing a dance of joy!!)