Midtown Lunch

There are a lot of good cart options for falafel in the Financial District, but there’s always room for one more, right? After noticing a new cart called Don Halal right next to the No. 1 Bahn Mi cart at the corner of Hanover Sq. & Pearl, I chatted with the woman manning the window and after I didn’t order anything, she called me “sweetie” and invited me to come back. There are some interesting things on the menu like a falafel platter with Indian marinated vegetables, and chicken curry so I decided to go see if they could compete with the superb falafel across Water St. at Alan’s Halal.

A falafel over rice plate will run you $5 and comes with either soda or water, so it’s one of the better deals you’ll find. The falafel are shoved off to the side and a bunch of that veg curry is put on top of the rice. The hot sauce here is straight up sriracha which I found interesting. I’ll never argue with sriracha being added to my plate of street meat, but it’s sometimes more fun if the cart makes their own since no two are ever the same. Let’s talk about that curry first. The part with the lentils and chickpeas was delicious as they had soaked up the curry spices (it wasn’t spicy, by the way) while the vegetable part was straight up peas, carrots and lima beans that were pretty flavorless.

The falafel was interesting – green on the inside with a nice nutty flavor. The batch I got may have been sitting around because they didn’t taste freshly fried, but it could also have been because they were trapped in a styrofoam container on my long walk back to the office. I saw a couple of people’s plates of street meat and it looked like the chicken is chopped up breast meat, in case you’re trying to keep it healthy.

This falafel wasn’t as fresh as the balls found a block away at Alan’s, but I did like their unique flavor and the attempt at doing something different with the curried vegetables.

Don Halal, north side of Hanover Sq. btw. Pearl & Water