Homemade Cart’s Falafel Plate Might Be Its Weakest Link

We wrote about the Homemade Cart long ago, with its owner who makes lamb meatballs and will give you a scoop of red beans with your rice platter if you ask nicely. The two gentlemen you see above had quite a system going so even though there was a line when I got there, it wasn’t long before I was giving my order of a falafel platter $5) which had been recommended. After eating my lunch, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps the lamb or chicken are the way to go here.

I’d stopped by a couple of previous times, but they didn’t have any falafel, so this time I asked before joining the line. It wasn’t long before falafel balls were placed on top of my choice of spicy rice and salad, a large slice of cucumber and some tomato, with white and hot sauces.

So, the downfall of ordering falafel from this cart is that there’s no fryer on board (although they do have a spinning cone of lamb!), so the falafel are pulled pre-cooked from a plastic bag. That means that they’re not crispy or particularly warm, both of which negated anything else the falafel may have had going for it. The rice was great (although not really spicy) and I liked the salad which had fresh ingredients.

Next time I’d go for the lamb gyro which is carved from the spinning cone and then crisped further on the flat top. Meats are the way to go at the Homemade Cart.

Homemade Cart, Beaver St. at Broadway

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2 Comments

  • I have been eating from this cart for 2 years now and their chicken is the way to go. In my opinion its the best platter downtown ever since Musthafa split off of “Zak’s” cart. They use thigh meat and leave it in nice chunks. They also season it better than most of the carts downtown.
    You have to get to the cart just after 12 for 3 reasons.
    1-His seasoning tends to cake on after sitting for a bit
    2-He throws the raw chicken on pretty close to the cooked and steams pitas on the raw chicken so if you like your platter with a pita, you want to get there just as the first batch is ready
    3-He is the slowest server i have ever seen

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    Thanks for posting about this cart. I finally tried it a couple of weeks ago, and have been back several times just for the beans over rice, with salad on the side. The lamb is good, too, as well as the lamb meatballs, but my personal favorite is the kidney beans. Makes me think I could become a vegetarian if I really had to…

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