"High priest" Anthony Bourdain blesses the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop

With the weather expected to be rainy for the next few days, you can still enjoy great street food indoors from some of your favorite vendors.  Here’s brick-and-mortar news from a few of them – Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, Mexicue and Cupcake Stop.

On Saturday, the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop opened at 125 East 7th St between 1st Ave and Ave A.  The Grand Opening of the store was blessed by “high priest” (wink, wink) Anthony Bourdain, and there was a lot of other craziness going on too.  Click here for the Big Gay Ice Cream blog, which has video and more info on this special event.

Lunch from the first Mexicue store

In early July, we brought you a sneak peek of Mexicue’s brand new store at 345 7th Ave.  Now word comes they are opening a second store on the Lower East Side at 106 Forsythe St (between Broome and Grand St).  The soft opening is this Friday, September 9th, and the official opening is a week later .  By the way, Mexicue is putting a 2nd truck on the street as well.

Cupcake Stop variety pack

Cupcake Stop, who currently have two trucks on the NYC streets, will be opening a kiosk in the Staten Island Mall in October.

The kiosk will feature specially-lit counters and the“cupcakes will be displayed like jewelry,” said Richard Kallman, CEO of Cupcake Stop.

On Sunday, the first day gay marriage will be legal in NYS, Cupcake Stop will be celebrating with the above cupcakes on their trucks.

No word yet on where they will be parking, but somewhere near City Hall sounds about right!

Talk about perfect timing!

Cupcake Stop (x 2) is back on the street today, just in time for 4/20 parties.

They have 2 trucks -  one is parked at 58th St & 8th Ave, right by the Columbus Circle subway station and one is at 7th Ave bet 6th-7th street in Park Slope.  If you take a picture of either truck and send it to them, it will be posted on their facebook page.

I’m not sure exactly what time they’re open until, but I can’t imagine anyone celebrating 4/20 is up yet.

Great to have Cupcake Stop back on the street!

Cupcake Stop at the 2009 Vendy Awards

It looks like the original NYC cupcake truck (and 2009 Vendy Award finalist in the Dessert category) Cupcake Stop, will be returning to the NYC street very soon.

Just this morning, Cupcake Stop tweeted “Yes we are really coming back and thank you to all of our fans and loyal customers who have supported us RT @Bklyntravel: Is @CupcakeStop really back?”

There is a countdown clock on their website that says “Stay tuned for a delicious announcement!”

Many New Yorkers are going to be very happy this morning.

See, Monday’s don’t have to suck!

Last weekend we went to brunch at Elephant & Castle on Greenwich Ave in the Village.  Right next door at 70 Greenwich Ave (just east of 7th Ave) is where the new Cupcake Stop Flagship Store will be opening, hopefully in a week or two according to Lev Ekster, the owner (or should we say Cupcake Magnate).  That makes 3 “brick & mortar” locations and 2 trucks for the growing Cupcake Stop empire and 2009 Vendy Award Finalist in the Dessert category.

NYC Cravings

As we mentioned earlier this week, Diana from NYC Cravings told us they were closing the truck for the winter after this week because they were opening a place within a Korean food court at 11 West 32nd St (between 5th & 6th Ave), and they were expecting to open in about 2 weeks.  Now you won’t have to wait until next spring for Taiwanese fried chicken, pork chops, zongzi, tea eggs and more from the 2009 Vendy Award Finalist in the Rookie of the Year category.

Calexico Carne Asada

The Vendley Brothers of Calexico Carne Asada fame, who won the (main category) Vendy Cup in 2008, are about to add another outpost in their slow colonization of New York.  Their new restaurant at 645 Manhattan Ave in Greenpoint, Brooklyn joins the already popular restaurant at 122 Union Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn and their two carts currently operating in Soho.  The Union St restaurant won Time Out New York’s Reader’s Choice Award for the Best New Mexican Restaurant of 2010, so expectations are high for this new spot, which is scheduled to open in 1 week.

QBA Cuban Kitchen (in progress)

Last, but certainly not least, the QBA Cuban Kitchen food truck is opening a restaurant on Montclair, NJ.  No wonder we haven’t seen them on the street much lately.  Details are scarce at this point, but we’re sure chef Lynna Martinez and company have something special planned for Montclair.

Well, Lev obviously got one for himself, and all he had to do was talk about how useful the ThinkPad Edge is for his daily business, Cupcake Stop.  Check out the video for some delicious cupcake porn.

If anyone from Lenovo is reading this, I’m sure the ThinkPad Edge would be quite useful for my business, too (and I’d be happy to give a testimonial to that effect). Just email newyorkstreetfood@gmail.com.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Cupcake Stop is making Irish-themed cupcakes with plenty of booze.  We don’t know if you actually need to be 21 to eat them, but just to be on the safe side, don’t drive or operate any heavy machinery after eating them.

Cupcake Stop’s baker, Heather Warren, is introducing a bunch of new flavors for the holiday, including Irish Soda Bread, Stout, Drunken Raisin, Bailey’s Cheesecake and Irish Coffee.  If you mention Gothamist while ordering a dozen before St. Patty’s day, you’ll get a baker’s dozen instead, with a free alcoholic cupcake of your choice. Cupcakes run $15 a dozen for the minis and $40 a dozen for the full sized versions. [Gothamist]

Lev Ekster, founder of Cupcake Stop, with a tray of Oreo crumb cupcakes

The  Cupcake Stop truck is the subject of our latest New York Street Food Featured Vendor Profile.  Cupcake Stop was founded by Lev Ekster, a Brooklyn native and recent New York Law School graduate who put his law career on hold to start Cupcake Stop after spending many long nights in the law library fueled by cupcakes.  We recently spoke with Lev and filed this NYSF Featured Vendor Profile:

NYSF: When did you start Cupcake Stop and what did you do before that? Did you have any food or business background?

Lev: Our first day was June 3, 2009.  Before that I was a business major in college and graduated from New York Law School in May 2009.  There weren’t too many good law jobs around due to the economy, so I looked into starting my own business.  I love cupcakes, but there were already a lot of cupcake stores around.  I thought the quality on many of them could stand improvement, but New York was already saturated with cupcake stores.  I saw The Dessert Truck and then other high quality food trucks, and it just made sense to think about opening a mobile food truck that served cupcakes.  We would stand out from the other cupcake stores by bringing cupcakes to the people.

NYSF: I noticed that you don’t have ovens in the truck.  When and where are the cupcakes made?

Lev: We share a commercial kitchen in Brooklyn with a catering company.  They use it during the day and we use it at night.  Our cupcakes are made from scratch and baked fresh every day, and the ones we don’t sell each day are donated to City Harvest.

NYSF: Where do you come up with such interesting flavors, such as psychedelic tie-dye, starry nights and brownie cheesecake?

Lev: Many of our flavors are based on our baker’s own recipes. However, on our menu page, we have a place where anyone can submit a new cupcake flavor idea.  We get between 50 and 100 new flavor submissions per day, and once a month, we select a new flavor from all the submissions. The person who submitted the winning flavor receives 100 free cupcakes.

NYSF: What are your future plans for Cupcake Stop?

Lev: Obvious choices would be to open a retail store, go into mail order, or have a second truck, but I want to be careful not to expand too quickly.  Many businesses have gone under by expanding too fast or by expanding and the quality of the product suffers.  We want to maintain the high quality of our cupcakes.  It’s also pretty tough at this time to get a food truck permit in New York.  Our next step is to open a stand on March 1st in the new Limelight Marketplace on 6th Ave and 20th St.  The first floor is going to have a sweets department, which is where we will have a new Cupcake Stop stand.

NYSF: Do you have any advice for aspiring street food entrepeneurs?

Lev: Be prepared to work hard.  If you’re thinking of opening a food-related business in New York, you have to able to wow people because the quality and variety of the food in New York is enormous.  You have to find a way to stand out.  In addition to a great product, you also need to have a good staff who like working with people and are polite to your customers.

NYSF: Thank you for your time and best of luck with Cupcake Stop.  It was a pleasure speaking with you.

Lev: Thank you.

Below is a sampling of the cupcakes NYSF purchased anonymously on Saturday in Soho.  They lived up to the hype.  My friends and family thoroughly enjoyed each and every one, although Red Velvet, Funfetti and PB&J were the favorites.

clockwise from top left: Red Velvet, Funfetti, Red Velvet, Vanilla Chocolate Chip, Vanilla/Chocolate, Peanut Butter & Jelly

Vendy Cup Finalists (excluding the winner)

The Rickshaw Dumpling Truck had great dumplings (duh!), but their plate had some nice cold noodles, too.

The King of Falafel and Shawarma, Fares Zeidaies, had a fervent following, and their matching outfits were quite colorful.  Their egg-shaped falafel was awesome, too.

I tried the jerk chicken at The Jamaican Dutchy cart, and it was very well done.  Hot, but not brutally so.  O’Neill Reid, the proprietor, takes his cooking very seriously (as they all do), and it shows in the end.  I didn’t get a picture of the jerk chicken, but below is the yummy squash bread.

Dessert Category Finalists (excluding the winner)

The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck had a perpetually long line all day.  Their menu was very creative.  The choice of toppings was staggering and unusual for ice cream: olive oil and sea salt, ground wasabi peas, toasted curried coconut, trix cereal, mixed berries and saba, banana-Scharffen Berger cocoa puree, cayenne pepper and dulce de leche with crushed Nilla wafers.  Crazy stuff!

Cupcake Stop had exceptional variety, as well.  Some of their flavors were Oreo crunch, candy apply, tiramisu and a few others of the same quality.

Rookie of the Year Finalists (excluding the winner)

This was the first time the Vendy Awards had a Rookie of the Year category, and it had some of my personal favorite types of food, schnitzel (who won-see my post on the winners) and BBQ.

Picknick Smoked was one of my favorites.  The pulled pork was nice and smoky, and not too drenched in sauce.  They also put cole slaw on the sandwich, which I like.  Their Arnold Palmers (half iced tea and half lemonade) were some of the best thirst quenchers of the day.

nyccravings was a nice nosh, with pork and vegetable dumplings, taiwanese pork chops and crispy fried chicken.  I really liked their sweet beijing sauce, too.

I can’t wait until next year.