New York Street Food

Today’s Lunch is a combo platter from the Kim’s Aunt Kitchen food cart on the south side of West 46th St, just east of 6th Ave (bet 6th & 5th Aves).  One side of the cart said Kim’s Aunt Kitchen and the other side of the cart had a big sign that said Food Is Love, which it also said on the menu board.  We couldn’t agree more!

The combo platter gives you the choice of any 2 offerings, which include grilled chicken, beef bulgogi, whiting, flounder and shrimp – plus rice, fries or lo mein, and a salad.  Pretty good meal for $7.50.  I chose the shrimp and flounder, with tartar sauce and hot sauce, and there was plenty of both – 5 pieces of shrimp and 2 pieces of flounder.  The shrimp was heavily breaded, but decent-sized.  If you get the shrimp (only) platter, it comes with 8 pieces for $6.

The flounder had a lighter breading than the shrimp, and was the better choice in my opinion.  The fried flounder sandwich was only $4.50, which is an excellent choice for future reference.

The rice was good, and there was a lot of it.  It was more like an Asian fried rice (without extra ingredients) than the Middle Eastern rice served on the halal carts.  There was way more rice than I could finish.  The salad was plain lettuce (I asked for no tomato), and since I didn’t ask for a dressing, they didn’t put one on.  That was my mistake, but after the fried fish and rice, plain lettuce was fine.

Today’s Lunch was very good.  I’ll be returning to Kim’s Aunt Kitchen, and next time I want to try the bulgogi or grilled chicken, which both looked really good when I was waiting for the fish.

Tilapia from Kwik Meal cart

ONE FISH, TWO FISH, JANUARY 1st, NO FISH (Update)

After freaking out street vendors and the bloggers who love them yesterday, the Health Department has emailed us to say it was all a big misunderstanding. A provision in the Health Department’s new code raised eyebrows by declaring that “no fish, shellfish, or any food consisting of or made with an aquatic animal…shall be prepared, stored, held for service or sold from a mobile food vending unit.” That’s what it says, but it’s not what they meant!

A spokesperson for the Health Department just sent us this statement: “The Health Department currently prohibits, and will continue to prohibit the sale of raw shellfish from a mobile food cart. However, the wording in the recent amendments to the Health Code effectively prohibit the sale of all seafood, raw and cooked, and that was unintentional. The Health Department intends to fix this, and will not enforce this amendment as written. So, everybody take a deep breath and stop taking the Health Department’s rules so literally. [Gothamist]

Tilapia from Kwik Meal cart

Midtown Lunch discovered a Dept of Health resolution scheduled to go into effect January 1st that bans street vendors from selling fish or shellfish from a “mobile vending unit”.

While some might question the sanity of eating fish or shellfish from a New York food cart or truck, there are some good choices out there.  I’ve enjoyed the fried cod from the Schnitzel & Things truck, and have heard good things about the fish over rice from Kwik Meal.

Hopefully, this will get reversed before its too late, but if not, it will be another example of the government trying to help people and screwing it up worse. [Midtown Lunch]