Before I went to LA, I read a tweet from Mexicue, the current New York Street Food Featured Vendor about a new menu item – a chili bread bowl. I’ve always enjoyed bread bowls from Au Bon Pain, but didn’t have a chance to visit Mexicue until today, and this seemed like the perfect meal for a cold winter day.
Today’s Lunch is a chili bread bowl ($6) from Mexicue.
The bread bowl was hollowed out in the middle, filled with chili, and topped with sour cream & chives, shredded cheese, chopped tomatoes, red onion and jalapenos.
Mexicue included a fork in the bag, but a knife would have been useful too. Luckily I had one in my desk. (Note to Mexicue: Please include knives with the chili bread bowls.)
I didn’t want to eat all the toppings and then the chili, so I dug around the edges of the toppings to get bites with both.
The jalapenos provided some heat, and the tomatoes, sour cream and cheese cooled things down a bit. They all went very well with the chili, especially the sour cream and jalapenos.
The chili itself had some bbq flavor, cumin, chili powder, cayenne, and probably a few other things. There was also some heat in the chili, but one thing it didn’t have was beans.
The bread bowl was deeper than I realized at first. You can tell from the picture below, there was a lot of chili deep in the bowl once you got past the toppings.
Great idea Mexicue! A chili bread bowl is a wonderful lunch this time of year. It was not as large as the bread bowls at Au Bon Pain, but it was cheaper at $6, and this was plenty of food for lunch.
Today’s Lunch was delicious. With the high quality of the ingredients used by Mexicue, and the inventiveness of their cuisine, it’s easy to see why they were nominated for a Vendy Award in the Rookie of the Year category in 2010 (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are nominated in the main category this year).
