New York Street Food

The good news: You and a guest can win a free gourmet lunch prepared by Chefs Daniel Boulud, Alain Ducasse, Michael White or Paul Liebrandt, which will be served from an exclusive food cart at one of four locations in New York City.  There will be 240 lunches awarded in total.  The Locals Only Secret Events Chefs Game is part of an NBC New York promotion that began yesterday and runs through Feb. 6th.

The bad news: The contest is only open to residents of the New York metropolitan area, and you have to answer 4 trivia questions about New York to enter (but they are multiple choice). Only winners of the contest will be able to sample these exclusive gourmet food cart lunches.

The contest: During the promotion period, which is 10am-4pm from Jan 26th through Feb 6th, go here and use one of the following codewords “Daniel Boulud, Alain Ducasse, Michael White, Paul Liebrandt, Chefs, Food Cart, or Feast”.  Complete and submit the short multiple-choice trivia quiz comprised of four questions that will test your knowledge of New York City.  You can enter once per day.

The winners: Up to 20 people who successfully complete the quiz will be notified by email the following day that they won admittance for them and a guest to one of four special lunches prepared by Chefs Daniel Boulud, Alain Ducasse, Michael White or Paul Liebrandt, and served from an exclusive food cart at one of four locations in New York City to be disclosed to winners on February 8, 2010 between 10:00 a.m. ET and 6:00 p.m.  Winners will be given the location of the Event and a Codeword, which will grant them access to the Event.

The complete contest rules are here. [nbcnewyork]

At the LA Auto Show last month, Scion unveiled the ultimate tailgate party, a Scion Kogi BBQ xD mobile kitchen.  Kogi, the Korean BBQ truck that started the gourmet food truck craze in Los Angeles, has outfitted this subcompact with everything needed to make it a fully functional taco maker.  Scion hooked up with Kogi to highlight how their cars can be customized for specific uses.

Imagine a customized Scion xD Mobile with an aluminum grill in the pop-out trunk, cooking utensils and sauces in the pop-out taillights, and a sink to clean up in one of the rear-passenger doors, all retractable by remote control. Arm yourself with good meat and good company and you’re ready for a tailgate party, a picnic at a local park, or a family dinner of Korean BBQ tacos on the front lawn.

Below is a video from the show, with the Scion Kogi monster showing up around the one minute mark:

Crispy pork skin and roast pork

Minced fish satay

The NY Times explored the street food of Bali and came away very impressed.  The many streetside food vendors are known as warungs. They usually are in a modest shack or roadside lean-to with a small counter and a bench where customers sit and eat traditional dishes. The bigger ones are no more than no-frills cafes, sometimes made out of materials like rattan and corrugated metal.

The watchword for street food in Indonesia is variety: minced fish satay, freshly-killed sahsimi, tender roast pork with crispy skin, and grilled chicken with chili garlic and shrimp paste.  Too bad it’s on the other side of the world, not on the other side of town. [NY Times]

Grilled chicken and side dishes in Bali

Sarah DiGregorio at Fork in the Road tells us about a woman at the northeast corner of Mott Street and Hester Street in Chinatown who presides over a small stack of boxes containing joong, bamboo-leaf-wrapped parcels of sticky rice with goodies inside such as pork belly, mung bean, and peanut.  I have enjoyed these for many years, and have seen them referred to as lotus leaves on some Chinese menus.  One of my favorite ingredients in lotus leaves is Chinese sausage.  There are also sweet, dessert versions of joong.  The joongs  from this street vendor are $1.50 each.  Joongs are most traditionally eaten as part of the Spring Dragon Boat Festival, but they’re available all year long, and freeze well after being cooked. They’re perfect cold weather food–steamy, dense, and glossy with melted pork fat. [Fork in the Road]

Grillwalker in Berlin

War of the Wursts hits Berlin as Grillwalkers, with 4 pounds of propane on their back, portable grills, and wursts galore, traverse the city selling one of my favorite street foods.

As reported by the NY Times, the Grillwalker was invented by Bertram Rohloff in 1997 after being laid off from his job in hotel management.   Mr. Rohloff now has 15 employees selling sausages around the city in teams of two; they take turns wearing the grill and reloading the sausages, rolls and condiments.  Their mobility allows them to follow the crowds, showing up outside nightclubs, at major parades and even at union demonstrations, which Mr. Rohloff said were among the best places for business.  Mr. Rohloff patented the design, but that has not discouraged imitators such as Grillrunners.  At the beginning, there were some pretty serious arguments, but these days they keep their distance from each other. [NY Times]

On a related note, my favorite street wurst was in Vienna, where they used heated spikes to make a warm, tubular hole in the long roll, squirted ketchup or mustard on top, stuck in the wurst, then put a little more ketchup or mustard on top.  It was the perfect mobile munchie.