The Red Hook food trucks serve verything from arepas to pupusas to quesadillas and even ceviche.
Or, if you were paging through the
penultimate issue of Gourmet magazine
last fall, you might have seen its feature
on street food, where superchef after
superchef was standing in line, waiting
for tricked-up kebabs and quesadillas
with a twist. Daniel Boulud, owner of
Restaurant Daniel and DBGB in Manhattan, among many other restaurants, was
holding a hot dog.
My first food truck tip came from
Bradford Thompson, the chef who formerly cooked at Mary Elaine’s at the
Phoenician in Phoenix, Lever House
in Manhattan and, for years, at Restaurant Daniel in New York. Thompson
may cook fancy, but he eats simply;
he loves the dishes of his wife’s native
Jamaica, he loves tailgating at Giants
home games, and he loves street food.
One weekend, he was housesitting for a
friend in Murray Hill, and he couldn’t get
over how lucky he was to be near one of
his favorite carts: at 30th and Fifth.
“It’s just Halal food,” he says, describ-
ing kebabs and chicken or lamb over
rice sold by street vendors, sometimes
keeping with the dietary restrictions
of Muslims, sometimes not. “But done
really well.”
I’d never thought about street food—
in New York, at least—being something
more than dirty water dogs or pretzels.
Like any self-respecting backpacker in
her 20s, I’d eaten crepes cooked on cast
iron from a cart in Paris, pad Thai sold by
hawkers with steaming hot woks at the
night market in Chiang Mai, and tons of
tacos from vendors and markets all over
Mexico and Central America.
A New Kind of Food Court
Last summer, I was riding my bicycle
down Bay Street in Brooklyn, craning my
neck, trying to find the Red Hook ven-
dors. I needn’t have strained: Once you
get to the corner of Clinton and Bay, you
can’t miss them. Trucks are parked along
the curb of the sidewalk that frames
Red Hook Park, selling everything from
Colombian arepas to Salvadoran pupu-
sas to Mexican quesadillas. There are
chiles rellenos; beef skewers and kebabs
called pinchos (or chuzos, depending on
the vendor); fried chicken; roast tacos;
grilled corn on a stick, rolled in mayo and
cheese and dusted with chile powder.
There’s even a ceviche lady.
