Improvised Chicken Curry At The Newly Christened “7 Hanover” Cart

It’s not often I get in on naming anything, let alone a place that serves me cheap-ass food. I headed to a cart in front of 7 Hanover Square (at Pearl St.) on a mission to get their chicken curry ($5) that I had spotted a few days before. They serve it every day, but I guess it’s popular because when I ordered it around 1 p.m. I was sadly told that they were out of it. The guy who was manning the grills must have seen the crestfallen look on my face as I tried to figure out what else to get, and offered to cook up some chicken and put “gravy” on it for me. Read on to see how this improvised street meat turned out.

It took a few minutes for my concoction to be made since they apparently had to grill some fresh chicken for me. During that time I learned that the two guys working there are from Bangladesh and that they’re brothers. The one cooking is named John. I also asked what the name of their cart was, and completely stumped the guy in the photo above. Suddenly, one of them looked through the window and (maybe jokingly) christened the cart “7 Hanover” because, well, they’re parked in front of 7 Hanover Square. The alternate name was John’s cart.

Anyway, my food was soon done and then I had to make a choice of which of four sauces to try. Since I wanted to be able to taste the gravy, I opted for the green cilantro sauce (bottom left in above photo) and a hot sauce made from jalapenos (top right), squirted on the side. They also have regular white sauce and red hot sauce, but I thought that might be saucy overkill. The container also contained yellow rice and a bare bones salad that was basically shredded lettuce.

The chunks of chicken were pretty great, although I wish I would have gotten a little more gravy. Basically, he just took the leftover curry sauce and dumped it over my chicken, which is fine by me. I’m sure the actual curry chicken is better, and next time I’ll head there around noon to secure some.

The two sauces also helped with the flavor, and the only disappointment was the neither was particularly spicy by my standards. The jalapeno had a slight kick to it, but nothing too crazy.

The rice underneath the chicken was pretty good, although just like the salad it was no frills and didn’t have any vegetables. I think you have to specify if you want vegetables, actually, which I did not do. The rice definitely benefited from chicken grease and various sauces as the portion underneath the salad was a little dry on its own.

Other than the elusive chicken curry, there were other things on the menu that not every cart has. One guy behind me ordered the tilapia over rice ($5), and the menu on the front of the cart says they also have salmon ($6) and shrimp. Some people may have a “thing” about ordering seafood from a cart. Not this girl! I didn’t get sick from eating at the Terrace Fish & Chip, so I think I’ll be OK.

THE + (What somebody who likes this place would say)

  • They are not afraid to throw things together in order to please a customer.
  • They have more than just the lamb, chicken and falafel trinity.
  • Cilantro and jalapeno sauces are both inventive and delicious.
  • Street meat salmon is kind of rare.

THE — (What somebody who doesn’t like this place would say)

  • They run out of their special items like chicken curry pretty early.
  • It takes a bit of time to get your order.
  • Their rice and salad are bare bones without the aid of grease and sauce.

7 Hanover Cart, in front of 7 Hanover Square at Pearl St.

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