Midtown Lunch

Summer may not start until this weekend, but on Monday I rang in the season early by performing a New Yorker’s seasonal ritual: standing in line with a couple hundred people at a food festival. It’s something I tend to avoid no matter what time of year, but despite that I made my way to West Chelsea to the Zagat Food Truck Frenzy in order to get a taste of some of the food trucks that don’t often make it to Midtown South or Flatiron. What I found was a number of tasty tacos and a bunch of trucks I want to try out some more.

The Steak Truck is usually up near 47th Street, no where near my neck of the woods. I’ve always been curious about the truck, so was psyched to see them there. The truck has recently begun sourcing it’s beef from Holton Farms in Vermont, taking the whole local ingredients trend to the truck set for the first time (that I know of).

They were serving these mini steak sandwiches topped with spring onions, arugula, butter and sea salt of a good quality baguette. The beef was perfectly rare for my taste and the baguette was firm and chewy.

The folks from Great Performances were handing out veggie sliders.They didn’t look half bad, I could have stopped there, but with limited space (and tickets) my choice was clear and I moved on.

The rest of 22nd Street was jammed, with long, overlapping lines in front of Souvlaki Truck, Luke’s Lobster Truck and The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck that I wasn’t about to try to decipher, so I made my way to 21st Street.

Besides the lines for Korilla and Feed Your Hole, the trucks on 21st Street were much more mellow.

I managed to get a chicken taco from Big D’s Grub Truck without much wait at all. I had the chicken taco, which was basically a chicken banh mi taco – cilantro, pickled cucumber wedge and all that. I didn’t find it bland, as Blondie and Andrea did, but it did put me in the mood for more tacos.

I made Endless Summer my next stop for a more traditional taco. The mostly Williamsburg-based truck has been a late night favorite of mine for years. Having it available for lunch for even a day was a treat.

I got a pork taco, which reminded me that, as much as I love all these fusion tacos, the old standard Mexican style ones are still amazing. The pork was thick and shredded, the hot sauce had kick and the sprinkling of crumbly queso just brings it all together.

I headed back to Korilla once the line had died down and accidentally blinded a few of the guys in the truck with my flash (sorry, guys) while I ordered a bulgogi taco.

What I got was a truly, wonderfully spicy taco with sweet, chewy beef and a tasty, smokey sauce.

I finished off with a burger from Feed Your Hole, which came with a cup of chili and a little cookie on the side.

The burger was topped with goat cheese and balsamic cooked onions, which made everything a little sweet, but not too much so.

The chili was also a little sweet and chunky, with some spice, but not overwhelmingly hot. I still haven’t had a chance to check out Feed Your Hole for lunch, but this definitely got them higher on my to-do list.

In the end, that’s why I bothered to schlep all the way to the west side to check out the festival. With so many trucks around town these days, each moving around every day, there are plenty that I haven’t checked out and even with the diligent reporting from Midtown North, you can’t really beat actually tasting what they’re offering. Now I’ve got a list of places that I’ll be on the look out for.