There’s a new kid on the New York street food scene – Toast Monster. We had a First Look recently, and decided to go back for an encore.
On Fridays the cart is on 50th St between 6th & 7th Ave for lunch. We don’t expect that to change, because arriving at the cart around 1pm, they only had one savory type of sandwich left on the menu. All the others were sold out.
The concept behind Toast Monster is sandwiches on toast, and they have both savory and sweet. The savory sandwiches come on thick slabs of white or wheat bread, which are toasted over a flame grill. The sweet sandwiches are served on French toast!
There were a few interesting choices on the menu, but we came too late for a choice. It was either chicken parmigiana or dessert for lunch. We went for the chicken parmigiana, which costs $7. Not that you can see it inside the uncut sandwich.
Pieces of Italian-seasoned chicken were heated on the grill, then put over the bread and mozzarella cheese. Tomato sauce was added on top, then the sandwich was closed up and flipped over for evenness.
We must say, it’s a little strange having chicken parmigiana on toast. Chicken parm heros have been a big part of our diet for as long as we can remember, and they are always on hero/hoagie/grinder rolls. That said, this was a tasty sandwich, and we ended up not quite as stuffed as usual after a chicken parm hero.
The sandwich didn’t use whole chicken cutlets, they were chopped into pieces, but still had that good Italian seasoning. There was plenty of garlic and mozzarella cheese.
The tomato sauce was good. It had a nice tomato flavor, but was not too acidic or sweet. The sandwich could have use a little more tomato sauce…but hold on…the 2nd half of the sandwich had more sauce than the first. Much better.
Toasting the bread over flames did not quite have the same effect as putting hero bread into a high-temperature pizza oven, but there was still some crispness to the bread. Also, the slices of bread were thick enough that it didn’t fall apart or get soggy from the sauce by the time we got back to the office, 10 minutes or so.
Toast Monster is a welcome addition to our streets. You can check out their website here, Facebook is here, and Twitter is here. We have also added Toast Monster to our Mobile Munchies Twitter feed.
There are definitely a few more things we want to try at Toast Monster, especially the desserts. How does PB&J or Nutella on French toast sound?
