Midtown Lunch

It’s been a while since I ate a plate of lamb or chicken over rice, and I set out with the intention of rectifying that earlier this week, after noticing a couple of new carts in the lineup on Broadway between Pine and Liberty streets. Shafiq’s Halal cart is one of those and although I initially was going to stick with the standard lamb and chicken over rice combo, I saw several people ordering biryani and changed my mind.

The menu also has things like kati rolls, chicken curry and something called potato chops but they were slammed with a lunch crowd and I didn’t have a chance to ask if these were things actually on the menu regularly. Regardless, they serve one of the better versions of biryani that I’ve had from a cart.

There’s chicken or vegetarian biryani ($6) although I didn’t see anything about a lamb option. I suppose you could order the veg biryani with lamb gyro dumped on top.

The first thing I noticed was that the rice was nice and moist instead of hard and a little dried out as seems to happen often with cart biryani. The second was that there was a lot of dark meat chicken tucked into the rice and although it wasn’t as seasoned as the one at Bombay Biryany cart, it was slightly salty and pretty good. You also get a whole egg and a little bit of salad.

It’s a little nuts how all of these carts serving biryani have clustered at Broadway & Liberty, but if you’re in search of some $6 rice and meat, Shafiq’s will do you right.

Shafiq’s Halal Cart, Broadway & Liberty St.