Street Eats
New York City—where hot dog carts seem to be on every street corner—is being infiltrated by a new wave of gourmet street food vendors. Most are doing business from trucks, making them more mobile. There are also quirky, new offerings, such as warm, grass-fed Angus burgers or crispy Belgian waffles topped with chocolate. And in yet another new twist, the owners use their Twitter accounts daily to announce locations and menu changes, and to answer customer questions.
Check out these 10 gourmet food trucks that are changing the street food landscape.
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Posted May 28, 2010
Bistro Truck
Follow them: @BistroTruck
Focusing on Mediterranean and Moroccan flavors, Bistro Truck serves up quick bites like lamb cigars—filo dough stuffed with ground lamb—or heartier meals such as its steak sandwich made with marinated skirt steak on a French baguette.
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Calexico Cart
Follow them: @calexicocart
Calexico has two carts offering Mexican food in Manhattan's fashionable SoHo neighborhood and a restaurant of the same name in Brooklyn. In 2008, Calexico won the Vendy Award (it's like the Oscars for street vendors) for best food.
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Cupcake Stop
Follow them: @cupcakestop
Besides two trucks in New York City, Cupcake Stop has two store fronts; one in the newly opened Limelight Marketplace in Manhattan and the other in Montclair, N.J. The company also ships its cupcakes—flavors include rocky road and peanut butter and jelly—across the country.
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Frites'N'Meats
Follow them: @fritesnmeats
Vadim Ponorovsky, owner of Paradou, a restaurant in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, brings his expertise to food carts. His creation, Frites'N'Meats, serves up gourmet burgers (made from grass fed angus or Kobe beef) and hand cut, double-fried Belgian fries.
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NYC Cravings
Follow them: @nyccravings
Using family recipes, Thomas Yang offers Taiwanese-style fried chicken, pork or fish cakes to hungry office workers during the lunch hour. “They were like three dollars or something," said customer Jody Healey, about the pork dumplings. "And I loved it."
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Schnitzel & Things
Follow them: @schnitzeltruck
Schnitzel, an Austrian dish, is a pounded, thin cutlet that is breaded and fried. This truck serves three versions: chicken, pork and cod schnitzel. The Schnitzel Truck was briefly featured in a T-Mobile TV commercial.
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Street Sweets
Follow them: @streetsweets
This bright blue truck's menu includes muffins, individual cakes, cookies and croissants that can be filled with sweets like Nutella, marshmallow cream or dulche de leche. In order to cut down on emissions, the Street Sweets truck—nicknamed "Chopper" after the owner's dog—runs on biofuels.
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The Treats Truck
Follow them: @thetreatstruck
This movable bakery serves baked cookies and brownies daily, but also mixes it up with specials, such as cakes and pies. The truck is nicknamed "Sugar" and is run on compressed natural gas in order to be kinder to the environment.
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Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream
Follow them: @vlaic
This company has five trucks on the road and a store in Brooklyn. Van Leeuwen's use of local ingredients in its ice cream attracted the eye of retailer Whole Foods, which sells pints of the ice cream in its stores in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York.
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Wafels & Dinges
Follow them: @waffletruck
Wafels & Dinges (the Flemish translation for waffles and things) serves waffles topped with everything from strawberries or Nutella to Belgian chocolate fudge. The owner, Thomas DeGeest, was on the Food Network competition show "Throwdown with Bobby Flay" this year, where the celebrity chef challenged him to a waffle competition. DeGeest won.
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