Toum Truck’s Massive Lebanese Sandwiches Are Like Your Very Own Eating Challenge

The other day I headed out in the sudden lunchtime downpour to check out the Toum Truck which serves Lebanese sandwiches and rice platters along with some items like fried kibbeh, pizza and homemade lemonade (which gets a thumbs up from ML contributor Sarah). The truck first stopped in the Financial District last week after mostly parking in the Flatiron, but ran out of food and decided to give us a bonus day to make up for that. After ordering my meaty sandwich, another lunch’er and I stood in the rain, watching it be assembled and were in awe of the sheer size of my lunch that made a Chipotle burrito look like a finger sandwich.

The name of the truck comes from a whip made of garlic, salt, oil and lemon called Toum which was smeared on the giant wrap encasing my makanek (Lebanese beef sausage) sandwich ($7). Seriously, when I unrolled the sandwich it was the size of a small pizza and because this thing was so massive and not cut in half, it became a fork and knife affair.

There are just as many vegetarian options on the menu as there are meaty ones, including falafel, grilled halloumi cheese, grape leaves, spinach pie and some dips like hummus.

I went with the makanek simply because I’d never heard of it before and it sounded good. Also, it was pouring out and intensely pondering the menu wasn’t going to happen. Inside the sandwich was iceberg lettuce, tomato, pickle spears, onions, french fries and five or six of the beef sausages that were the size of a long chubby finger.

There was so much flavor happening here between the pickles and the pine nut studded sausage, but the toum sauce trumped all. The area around you will smell like garlic and so will you after eating this, but I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. The pile of fries inside also got infused with garlic (and a little hot sauce) flavor and although they were soggy I didn’t mind too much.

Bottom line: You might as well save yourself a couple of bucks and just get a sandwich at the Toum Truck because you get mostly the same amount of food as the platters, but just in a less tidy package. Be prepared to get messy.

The truck’s going to try to park in the Financial District on Fridays, but you might want to check the daily ML Downtown Twitter Tracker post before heading out for lunch.

Toum Truck, on Twitter

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