New York Street Food

(credit: Serious Eats NY)

If you want to check out “real” street food from different parts of Latin America, you should read this article.

We’ve heard about the late night street food tour of Roosevelt Ave in Queens when the Vendy Awards people tweeted about it.  It’s run by Jeff Orlick, a local resident, who recently took someone from Serious Eats on the tour, who wrote about it.

Click here for the article, which has mouth-watering pictures, as well as info on the tour itself.

(credit: Serious Eats NY)

(credit: Phil Corso)

From the  (Queens) Times Ledger:  City Councilman Mark Weprin (D-Oakland Gardens) has zoned in on what he called a recent phenomenon, urging the Council’s Consumer Affairs Committee to see what’s cooking on the streets of eastern Queens.

The appearance of food carts along Bell Boulevard, Hillside and Springfield avenues as well as Union Turnpike has left Weprin asking the city to investigate and potentially regulate concerns, including health and safety issues, unfair competition (really?) and unsightliness.

The councilman said the city would hold hearings later this spring to discuss these issues with local vendors and the community to resolve how to regulate food vendors.

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Food lovers from throughout Queens descended upon about 30 street carts on Roosevelt Avenue last month, munching on everything from pumpkin quesadillas to an Ecuadorian shrimp dish during a 2-mile walk planned by Woodside resident Jeff Orlick meant to raise people’s awareness of the tasty eats in Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona.  “I really wanted people to come out and experience firsthand what’s available here,” said Orlick, the founder of the Jackson Heights Food Group, an organization that meets monthly to try different foods in one of the seemingly endless choices of restaurants in western Queens.

About 20 people participated in Orlick’s first Roosevelt Avenue food crawl.  Those embarking on the adventure began the tour armed with a map drawn by Orlick, a helpful piece of artwork that mentioned other non-food related places he believed should be checked out, including a cart full of Mexican jewelry and a bookstore.  The map also depicts the Warren Street taco carts — “the mecca of Ecuadorian food carts,” according to Orlick — and crawl participants said his map aptly described the street carts on Warren Street in Elmhurst as “proof God exists.”

Tour-goers raved about the food from many of the stands, and Flushing resident Jack Eichenbaum, who has for 25 years led his own walking tours throughout the city, bought a $3 mushroom quesadilla from a stand at 75th Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights.  Belen Macias, a Richmond Hill resident who works at the El Guayaquileno cart at 80th Street and Roosevelt Avenue, said she was especially pleased individuals had tried their Ecuadorian shrimp cocktail — a favorite among the stand’s customers.

“People from Ecuador living in Washington, D.C.; Connecticut; Pennsylvania, they can’t get Ecuadorian food where they live, so they’ll come here,” said Macias, who is from Quebedo, Ecuador. “They’ll ask for food to pick up and will buy things like 25 bollos to bring back to their homes.” For more information about the Jackson Heights Food Group, visit iwantmorefood.com. [YourNabe.com]