Midtown Lunch

If y’all are anything like me, you watched a movie in the late 90s called Half Baked and know exactly to what Mr. Nice Guy refers. If not, consider yourself lucky, because walking up to this truck thinking you might be able to get THAT will only disappoint. Not that I tried!! But you know, just in case you were the type to joke with the person taking your order and they just look at you like ‘wut’ and you feel very dumb…

By the time I got to the truck around 1:30 that day, they’d sold out of quite a few of the sliders. Oddly, though the side of the truck SAYS “wings” – the wings were listed as the day’s special, so I don’t know if they have them every day. When I placed my order, the girl asked me what style I wanted. The menu was no help here, so she quickly told me my choices were Buffalo, something that sounded like teriyaki (she said it was sweet), and then a third choice chili-garlic that sounded vaguely like the stuff you get on Korean fried chicken – which I like – so I opted for that one.

After a short wait, my order was handed to me – no bag, no utensils, no napkins. Call me princessy but if you’re going to give me a Styrofoam container of wings, you may want to include some napkins. Worse, when I took the box from her, some of the sauce had gotten on the outside of the box, and immediately rendered my left hand sticky and covered in sauce. I gave the cashier an odd look and asked for napkins, and she handed over two and a half-hearted apology, like she didn’t understand why I’d want napkins.

The wings were hefty-sized, and glazed heavily with a fairly spicy chili garlic sauce. There was a ton of sugar in the glaze as well – so those who don’t like sweet-spicy on their wings will not like this – but the heat was enough to make me break a sweat on a relatively cool day, and tear up (and cry off all of my mascara over the course of the 10 minutes it took me to eat). I believe I was served 5, maybe 6 good sized wings… alongside some really odd looking fries. At first I thought maybe this wasn’t regular potato, but no, they just have this weird wrinkly look to them.

But really, the most egregious thing about the fries – well, the fries were actually offensive all around, sadly. They were soft, oddly sized, and some were undercooked. And then there’s this – proof that they hand cut (or at least use one of those grater-type things whose name is completely escaping me right now – and I’d look it up but then you guys would have no content again for days on end when I got sucked into a black hole of internet searching and heaven forbid that happens again) the potatoes – the butt piece of the potato that was apparently just tossed in to fry with the rest of the fries. I didn’t bite or cut that – it’s a good inch, inch and a half long/thick piece of potato that wasn’t fry-cut. Yep.

I grudgingly admit that the wings were fine to even good – if you like that style of sauce – but as they were listed as a special (despite WINGS being emblazoned on the side of the truck, which upsets me! why??) – but the whole experience was exactly the opposite of what one might want or expect from a truck called Mr. Nice Guy. I mean, what are the redeeming qualities of a staff that doesn’t seem to care at all about their customers (witnessing several other bizarre interactions with other would-be customers gave me the impression that she just could not care if there were 10 customers or 1, everyone was just boring to her), a menu that’s clunky and confusing, and terrible, terrible fries? There are none!

The Mr. Nice Guy truck moves around so be sure to check their Twitter if you want to give them a go. And if you’ve had a different experience at this truck, by all means, sound off in comments and tell me my experience was a fluke, or that I absolutely need to give them a second shot. I wanted to like them – I mean, the sun is wearing sunglasses! How cool is that?! But they made it really, really difficult.

THE + (what people who like this will say)

• Cool logo, bro
• Lots of different kinds of sliders
• Lunch being under $10 doesn’t matter to me (my lunch was $10 but 3 sliders and fries is $12)

THE – (what people who don’t like this place will say)

• I need to KNOW if there will be wings, not just hope it’s the day’s special
• Odd service doesn’t do it for me
• Prices are too high, sliders don’t justify such a high price

Mr. Nice Guy Truck – they were parked on 52nd and 6th when I visited.
Check their Twitter for their location, changes daily!