One of the tastiest and most interesting food trucks in NYC is Mexicue. As it says on their website, Mexicue is “the sweet, sweet love child of red-hot Mexican cuisine and down-home, barbeque goodness.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
One of the thing we’ve learned over the past few years of eating at food trucks is to definitely check out the daily or weekly specials. They are often seasonal, and are usually as good, if not better, than the regular menu. If a vendor is going to highlight a dish, I’ll give it a try.
Mexicue had 2 specials when we went there recently, and we also got one of our favorite regular menu items, a burnt ends chili slider.
The first thing we picked up was the burnt ends chili slider ($3.50), which had sliced, pickled jalapeños and crema on top of the chili. You know how some chili can be mostly meat and some chili can be mostly beans – this was mostly meat.
The chili had a sweet, smoky bbq-type sauce, and was excellent on a slider. The bun was pillow-soft, and the pickled jalapeños were a perfect addition, kicking up the heat level a notch or two. Mmm good!
The next item we tried was the BLT taco ($3.50). Every few months, Mexicue has a recipe contest where people send in recipes using one specific ingredient. Previous contests were for sweet corn, butternut squash and cheddar cheese. You can find out about the contests from their newsletter, which you can sign up for here.
The most recent recipe contest was with bacon, and the winning recipe was a BLT taco. In addition to bacon, there was lettuce, thinly-sliced green tomatoes, crumbled cojita cheese and chipotle mayo. This was a pretty good taco, but I added a little bit of their homemade sweet BBQ sauce, which went very well with the bacon.
The last item I ate was a taco with BBQ beets, goat cheese, cilantro and lettuce. I didn’t think I liked beets, but this dish turned my preconceptions on their ear. The beets were soft but not mushy, with a slight grilled flavor. Goat cheese was an inspired choice to go with the beets instead of cheddar, jack or something along those lines. The cilantro added some herbiness to the taco too. I don’t care if you think you like beets or not – give this one a try.
You can follow Mexicue on twitter here or on our Mobile Munchies twitter feed. They have two trucks, but I believe only one is out during the winter.
They also have two storefronts, one on the Lower East Side and one near Penn Station, which is perfect if you go to a game or concert at Madison Square Garden. It’s much better than the fast food in that area. The stores serve beer and wine too, and it’s much cheaper than MSG.
