If you turn up your nose at the thought of street meat, reconsider. New York City’s food vendors have gone gourmet, and they got their due this past weekend.
The city’s most popular — and tasty! — foot carts and lunch trucks were honored Saturday at the fifth annual Vendy Awards, a cook-off between the chefs who work at the portable take-out restaurants that park themselves along NYC’s busiest thoroughfares to serve quick and inexpensive delicacies to hungry New Yorkers.
“(It’s) the Oscars of food for the real New York,” celebrity chef Mario Batali allegedly declared, according to The New York Times.
The big winner this weekend? The Country Boys taco truck, which operates only on weekends at the soccer fields at Red Hook Park in Brooklyn. (OK, that’s a lie, they also have a satellite stand at Brooklyn Flea Market in Fort Greene.)
“We are so happy to know that the people love our food,” Fernando Martinez, who operates The Country Boys cart with his wife, Yolanda, told the New York Daily News. “We just feel loved and appreciated right now.”
A team of six official judges declared The Country Boys the top cart, but the rest of the winners were determined by the roughly 660 people who paid at least $80 to critique the international offerings at a park in Queens.
For the second straight year, Meru Sikder’s Biryani Cart took home the People’s Taste Award. The operators of Schnitzel and Things, an Austrian food truck, snagged the Rookie of the Year Award, and the Best Dessert Award went to Wafels & Dinges, which sells made-to-order waffles. Yum!
So, next time you think you’re too cool for street meat, think again. You might be passing up a Vendy Award winner.
Photo courtesy of jorem via stock.xchang.