Damn you Dessert Truck.
Not only have you infiltrated my evening stomping grounds in the East Village, as well as my work-days in Midtown, but just as I was growing immune to the lure of your chocolate bread pudding you’ve unleashed something even more irresistible.
Like the creamiest of pie fillings topped with toasted marshmallows and crunchy sugar-roasted pecans, this pumpkin custard is the perfect autumn snack. It’s a good thing it’s jacket season too because soon I might need to camouflage my many, many indulgences in this treat.
I promise to shut up about Dessert Truck now.
Dessert Truck - Park Ave and 52nd St. Mon-Fri 12pm-4pm and on Third Ave and St. Mark’s every day 6pm-midnight
Tasty Mexican street food is hard to come by in NYC, so this no-frlls tacqueria is worth the trek to Williamsburg. The tacos here, served on diminutive palm-sized tortillas, pack loads of flavor and at $2.50 apiece, are considerably cheaper than those you’d get at Mercadito in the East Village. (The tortillas also didn’t disintegrate while eating like my Mercadito tacos did, a good thing since at La Superior there was not a fork in sight). The carne asada taco was delicious by any standard, yet paled compared to the rajas taco–tender roasted poblano peppers drizzled in “Mexican” cream, and the chorizo toluqueno taco. The chorizo was like nothing I’ve tasted; a medley of spicy flavors that I devoured too quickly to contemplate. The flautas ($5.00) arrived hot and crisp from the deep-fryer, rolled around tender chicken and heaped with romaine and mild cheese, and the chips ($3.00) came with an assortment of sample-size salsas to satisfy any spice comfort-level. Two things you will NOT find here are dessert and alcohol. La Superior is BYOB but luckily there’s a deli right on the corner where you can pick up a few bottles of Pacifico or Bohemia. I can’t yet comment on the plates, which range from $8-$13, and include slow-cooked pork in banana leaves, grilled skirt steak and cheese with corn tortillas, and “torta ahogada”–sourdough bread stuffed with carnitas and beans, topped with hot arbol sauce. But you know a place is good when the waitstaff shows a clear passion for the food. When asked for a taco recommendation, one waiter said “that’s like asking me to choose between my children.”
La Superior in NYMag (3 stars)
La Superior 295 Berry St. at S. 2nd St. Williamsburg
Sun-Thurs 12:30pm-midnight, Fri-Sat 12:30pm-2:00am
cash only
Today Dessert Truck posted this notification on Facebook: “Our daytime spot will be Park Ave between 51st and 53rd Sts. We’ll be somewhere along the two blocks. We’ll be serving our regular menu and will be open from 11:30AM - 4PM. In case we have any parking issues, please bear with us as we work out the kinks for daytime service. If you’re working in the area, do stop by, even just to say hi! Also, if you could let anyone else who works in the area know that we’ll be there, we would really appreciate it.”
If you work in midtown, then you may well know the sad predicament you find yourself in when the clock on your desktop strikes one, you can smell your coworker’s french fries through your cubicle walls, and you’re having trouble focusing on your css/spreadsheet/proposal/whatever through the hunger pains. You really don’t want to go to some packed, over-priced buffet-style mess hall, so you find yourself at Starbucks, washing a stale scone down with a caramelly beverage, feeling fat and unhappy. Well now you can feel fat and happy scarfing down a tasty $5 dessert cup from the truck. I came down kinda hard on Dessert Truck, because of the weird cake-batter texture of their chocolate bread pudding, but after I wrote about it they started adding a few chunks of bread onto the top of each cup, which kinda won me over. I think there is - or used to be - a decent Indian cart serving up $5 plates on 53rd St. near Park Avenue, so you can make a meal of it.
The Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream truck sits in a sunbeam on a quiet cobblestoned street in Soho, like an upscale Mr. Softee waiting to be discovered by the hordes crossing Prince Street. Unlike a truck with an irksome jingle, however, Van Leeuwan quietly exudes class, from the gentle yellow color and elegant font used on the vehicle, to the flavors list, which ruminates on the high-quality ingredients used in its ice cream.
There’s some examples of this globe-trotting, gourmand-speak on the web site: hormone-free milk from cows that graze “in pastures in the foothills of the Adirondacks,” vanilla beans harvested from “organic bourbon and Tahitian vanilla orchids grown in Papua New Guinea,” pistachios grown “in the rugged lands of Bronte, in southern Italy.” I expected that the thoughtfulness employed to pick and present these ingredients would also produce a tastier-than-average ice cream. But while this is different from your average cone, it’s not exactly mind-blowing stuff.
If you’ve ever had homemade ice cream, that’s what it’s like–a bit icy in texture, and lacking in the upfront flavor and cloying sweetness. I thought that Van Leeuwan’s product tasted fresh and clean, but this was probably mostly a result of how it was presented. I sampled the Currants and Cream ($3.95 for a small) first, and ended up eating all the tart little frozen currants, leaving the uninteresting cream behind in a trash can. The subtle frozen heat in the Ginger flavor was intriguing, but quickly grew boring with only a few bursts of candied ginger in the mix. The winner of the three I tried was the Giandijia, a blend of hazlenut and Michel Cluizel chocolate. It had a subtle rich chocolate flavor, nicely balanced with earthy hazlenut, with a creamier texture than the other two.
While I’m a little confused by the paradox of an environmentally-friendly ice cream truck (how much gas does it take to fill that thing, let alone air-lift pistachios from Italy?), the use of some local, small-farm products and cups made from natural fibers is a nice touch. Plus the location alone, in the wilds of uber-luxurious Soho, makes it a refreshing pit-stop after an exhausting day of shopping. Be sure to get your artisanal ice cream fix before the last lazy days of summer slip away.
Van Leeuwen ice cream truck - Greene Street between Prince and Spring Street from 1pm-8pm; University Place between 11th and 12th St. 8-11pm.
Check their site for more locations.
Update 8/17/08: I haven’t seen the Wafel & Dinges guy in his usual spot for over a week; Midtownlunch says the city has put up No Parking signs. I did spot him one day on 44th St. between Sixth and Seventh Avenue, so perhaps a new locale will be announced soon.
Street-fare Belgian waffles have arrived in Midtown! The Wafels & Dinges truck has migrated uptown to 46th street between 5th and 6th avenue, brightening the days of office dwellers with its bright-yellow-truckness. The menu lists both the puffy, breakfast-style Belgian waffles, as well as liege waffles, in both cinnamon or vanilla flavors. I advise on getting your liege waffle ($4) dusted with sugar and calling it a day, but you can upgrade to something called the Waffle of Massive Deliciousness and pile on as many dinges (Belgian slang for toppings) as you like ($7).
The liege waffles were chewy and delicious as they should be, but fell short on the caramelized coating that you get at Le Petit Belge. Still, they were better than those at the lookalike Waffle Truck sighted around Astor Place–photo to the right, for your dossier. And the waffle man was nice, but a bit non-committal about how long they’ll be parked at the new locale. It sounds like something they’re trying out for a bit.
Maybe I’m just wildly susceptible to foodie trends (remember speakeasy cocktails?) but the wave of waffles hitting the city makes me very happy, and I don’t think I’m the only one. Whenever I get on an elevator with a hot liege waffle at least one person looks ready to pounce on it.
Wafles & Dinges Truck, South side of 46th St., between Fifth and Sixth Ave, closer to Sixth.
Around from about 9am-4pm. Check the web site for other locations