If you’re looking for something new to do this weekend, and still want to enjoy great food trucks, Belmont Park is hosting the inaugural Belmont Food Truck Festival on Saturday, May 25th.

8 of NYC’s best food trucks will be in the Belmont Park backyard from 11 am until post time for the last race, which is scheduled for 5:49 pm. General admission into Belmont Park is $3 and general parking is free.

Admission grants you full access to all of the food trucks, with food and drink being pay-as-you-go.

Click through for which food trucks will be at the inaugural Belmont Park Food Truck Festival, as well as some of the other events happening there on the same day, such as a Farmers Market.

In addition to the Food Truck Festival, on Saturday, May 25th, Belmont Park will conduct the Grade 2, $200,000 Sheepshead Bay for fillies and mares at 1 3/8 miles on the turf and present a $300,000 Guaranteed Late Pick 4.

Every Saturday Belmont Park presents a Farmer’s Market, with local purveyors of certified organic vegetables and greens, poultry, eggs, bakery items, pickles, and fresh fish and shellfish offering their goods.

As for which food trucks will be at Belmont Park on Saturday, the following vendors are scheduled to participate in the festival (subject to change):

Mike ‘N’ Willies

Toum

Palenque

Mac Truck

Chinese Mirch

Taco Bite

Trusty Burgers & Bites

And for dessert – La Bella Torte

Sounds like a nice day at the track.

Cannoli from La Bella Torte (credit: NYSF)

http://newyorkstreetfood.com/42179/belmont-park-food-truck-festival-debuts-this-weekend/

Illustration by Jasper Rietman

Stefan Nafziger seemed oddly downbeat for a guy watching a dozen or so hungry people line up to buy his falafels. Three years ago, when it seemed as if food trucks might take over Manhattan, he planned to have a fleet of his Taim trucks dispensing Middle Eastern fare throughout the city. He even got a Wall Street investor. Now, he says, his one truck barely justifies the cost.

I was originally hoping that Nafziger would help me figure out a decidedly New York puzzle. As I was walking through Prospect Park recently, I wanted to find a healthful snack for my son and something for me. The only options, though, were the same sort of carts that my dad took me to in the ’70s: Good Humor ice cream, overpriced cans of soda and overboiled hot dogs sitting in cloudy water. This seemed ridiculous. In the past few decades, food in New York City has gone through a complete transformation, but the street-vendor market, which should be more nimble, barely budges. Shouldn’t there be four Wafels & Dinges trucks for every hot-dog cart?

David Weber, president of the New York City Food Truck Association, explained that the ratio is more like 25 to 1 the other way. That’s because despite the inherent attractiveness of cute trucks and clever food options, the business stinks. There are numerous (and sometimes conflicting) regulations required by the departments of Health, Sanitation, Transportation and Consumer Affairs. These rules are enforced, with varying consistency, by the New York Police Department. As a result, according to City Councilman Dan Garodnick, it’s nearly impossible (even if you fill out the right paperwork) to operate a truck without breaking some law. Trucks can’t sell food if they’re parked in a metered space . . . or if they’re within 200 feet of a school . . . or within 500 feet of a public market . . . and so on.

Enforcement is erratic. Trucks in Chelsea are rarely bothered, Nafziger said. In Midtown South, where I work and can attest to the desperate need for more lunch options, the N.Y.P.D. has a dedicated team of vendor-busting cops. “One month, we get no tickets,” Thomas DeGeest, the founder of Wafels & Dinges, a popular mobile-food businesses that sells waffles and things, told me. “The next month, we get tickets every day.” DeGeest had two trucks and five carts when he decided he couldn’t keep investing in a business that was so vulnerable to overzealous cops or city bureaucracy. Instead, DeGeest reluctantly decided to open a regular old stationary restaurant.

Nafziger also knows well the regulatory hassles of the business. After one of his employees spent eight hours in jail for selling falafel without a license, he strictly follows the rule insisting that every mobile-food employee has Health Department certification. The trouble is that he needs to employ four people, each with his own license; if one quits, it can take two months for a new worker to get the proper paperwork. Nafziger said he holds on to his truck only because it’s basically a moving billboard for his two, more successful brick-and-mortar restaurants, in Greenwich Village and NoLIta. And stationary restaurants, by the way, require that only a single employee on duty have a Health Department certification.

Nafziger and DeGeest may have become experts in the rules and regulations, but many of the city’s vendors are constantly flummoxed. I spent one recent morning in the offices of the Street Vendor Project, a worker-advocacy group. As I sat with Sean Basinski, the group’s founder, a stream of vendors came in with pink tickets in their hands. One woman, an Ecuadorean immigrant who sells kebabs in Bushwick, Brooklyn, handed Basinski the six tickets that she and her husband received on a single afternoon. The total came to $2,850, which, she said, was much more than what she makes in a good week. She had a street-vendor’s license, she said, but didn’t understand that she also needed a separate permit for her cart.

The food-truck business, I realized, is a classic case of bureaucratic inertia. The city has a right to weigh the interests of food-market owners (who don’t want food trucks blocking their windows) and diners (who deserve to know that their street meat is edible, and harmless). But many of the rules governing location were written decades ago. In the ’80s, the city capped the number of carts and trucks at 3,000 (plus 1,000 more from April to October). Technically, a permit for a food cart or truck is not transferable, but Andrew Rigie, executive director of the N.Y.C. Hospitality Alliance, said that vendors regularly pay permit holders something like $15,000 to $20,000 to lease their certificates for two years. Legally, the permit holder becomes a junior partner in the new business.

As Rigie spoke, I was reminded of corrupt countries that I’ve visited, like Iraq and Haiti, where illogical and arbitrarily enforced rules create the wrong set of incentives. Perhaps the biggest winner in our current system is an obscure type of business known as an authorized commissary. By city law, every food cart and truck must visit a licensed commissary each day, where a set of mandated cleaning services can be performed. These commissaries also sell and rent carts and sell vendors food, soda, ice cream and propane. Rigie told me that many commissary owners make a bit extra by acting as informal brokers, facilitating the not-quite-legal trade of permits, which, by some estimates, is a $15 million-a-year business. Given their city-mandated stream of business, these commissaries have essentially formed an oligopoly. As a result, they have little incentive to compete aggressively by offering different kinds of food. No wonder we have an oversupply of hot dogs and knishes and nowhere near enough waffles and falafels.

Economically speaking, the problem is a standard one, known as the J-curve, which represents a downslope on a graph followed by a steep rise. Some sensible changes to the current food-vendor system may have long-term benefits for everyone, but the immediate impact could spell short-term losses for those who now profit from the system. A small group of New Yorkers — particularly owners of commissaries and physical restaurants — are highly motivated to lobby politicians not to change things. And most of the potential beneficiaries don’t realize they’re missing out. Many of the rest of us would love to have more varied food trucks, but we don’t care enough to pressure the City Council.

The one group that clearly suffers from the current system — the ticketed vendors — are often poorly paid immigrants without legal status and virtually no power. This sort of dynamic more or less sums up the economies of the third world. Economists generally agree that one of the distinguishing factors between rich countries and poor ones is that it is much easier to start businesses in rich countries. In Ecuador, for example, it takes about 56 days and 13 separate procedures to get all the legal paperwork done to start a new business. In the United States, it’s an average of six days and six procedures. But if you want to open a mobile-food business in New York, it’s essentially like starting a business in Ecuador — and that’s if you can somehow arrange a permit.

After I left Prospect Park, I went home and began to read about Portland, Ore. The city embraced food-truck and cart culture and has made the procedure for starting a business remarkably easy. I found a Web site listing the carts and trucks operating there: Caribbean, Cajun, Central American, creperie, Cambodian, Cuban, Czech. And that’s just the C’s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/the-food-truck-business-stinks.html?_r=0

The city is launching a food truck market next month, and will give first preference to Long Beach businesses interested in operating a food truck like Swingbellys, pictured.

City officials announced last week that it would allow food trucks to operate in Long Beach on a trial basis beginning next month, part of an effort to help local merchants this summer in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

The city is launching a Food Truck Market at the end of Riverside Boulevard on May 23 that will consist of businesses that currently have city mercantile licenses.

“The food trucks will be an extension and represent the existing products available at the business, and should be aesthetically pleasing and of the highest caliber and diversity of food quality as approved by the city,” read a statement on the city’s website. “Only in the event that extra spaces shall exist, then those spots may be obtained by non-mercantile businesses.”

“If extra spaces exist, it will be open to non-Long Beach business,” Councilwoman Eileen Goggin said at the April 22 Chamber of Commerce meeting.

The food truck market will be located at the municipal parking area at the end of Riverside Boulevard and Shore Road, Tuesday through Sunday, and at Kennedy Plaza on Mondays, and will operate from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. from May 23 through Sept. 2.

Those interested in participating in the food truck market may send a letter of intent, along with any supporting documents and pictures, to: City of Long Beach
ATTN: City Clerk, 1 West Chester St., Long Beach, NY 11561.
For more information, visit www.longbeachny.gov.

http://www.liherald.com/stories/City-to-launch-food-truck-market-next-month,47355?content_source=&category_id=5&search_filter=&event_mode=&event_ts_from=&list_type=&order_by=&order_sort=&content_class=&sub_type=&town_id=

]]> http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2013/05/long-beach-ny-city-to-launch-food-truck-market-next-month/feed/ 0 http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2013/04/new-york-ny-road-warriors-gourmet-food-trucks-roll-out-quality-across-l-i/ http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2013/04/new-york-ny-road-warriors-gourmet-food-trucks-roll-out-quality-across-l-i/#comments Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:00:18 +0000 MFN Editor #1 http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/?p=50883 By Rashed Mian | Long Island Press

Roberto Baez was burnt out.

For more than a decade, the native Long Islander of Cuban heritage had worked as a chef—half that time head chef—within the kitchens of various popular restaurants, manning the grill, overseeing orders and directing staff.

About two years ago he decided to jettison that exhausting lifestyle—and a good chunk of money—for a chance at a new beginning, taking his uncanny knack for concocting mouthwatering Caribbean on the road, literally.

Baez hopped on a plane to California and drove from San Diego to San Francisco, soaking in the sun, making pit stops along the way, all the time inhaling the fresh aromas of gourmet food wafting from the Golden State’s fleet of mobile food vendors.

That’s when it hit him.

“Food trucks are popular,” the 30-year-old recalls, relaxing outside his Rollin’ Cubans food truck, parked just west of Rte. 106 on Old Country Road in Hicksville. “[But] you don’t see them on Long Island at all.”

So, defying the fierce competition that defines the LI food industry, Baez decided to roll the dice, opening up his kitchen-on-wheels last July.

“In the restaurant business your lifestyle is sacrificed for money,” he says. “I’d much rather sacrifice money.”

Roberto Baez is working inside his Rollin’ Cubans food truck in Hicksville Saturday, April 14. His food truck has become a hit, attracting dozens of people a day.

Featuring painted flames curling upward from its wheel wells and large, bold purple lettering above its windshield proclaiming “Eat Cuban,” Rollin’ Cubans should probably be parked outside a crowded Miami nightclub. Instead, it’s adding a dose of culture and flare to an already-diverse Hicksville neighborhood.

And it’s popular—despite being in operation for under a year, Baez’ roving eatery has nearly 1,000 “likes” on Facebook.

Though Long Island is lightyears from becoming a food truck haven—you can’t go a block in Manhattan without seeing a mobile hotdog vendor or Halal meat truck, which isn’t the case here—there are hints the nationwide food truck craze may be catching on in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Several food trucks were parked outside Tanger Outlets at the Arches’ outdoor shopping mall in Deer Park last month for its Taste and Style event. In Long Beach, which was all-but decimated six months ago, compliments of Superstorm Sandy, there’s currently an effort to breathe some life into the city’s rattled business community by opening a Food Truck Market at the end of Riverside Boulevard and Shore Road, starting this month.

“One of the things that we heard loud and clear from our residents was they were looking for more opportunities to have food near the beach,” says Long Beach City Manager Jack Schnirman. “Hence, the food truck initiative.”

“It’s going to create an oasis for the neighborhood,” adds Sugo Café owner Alan Adams, one of the Long Beach merchants taking advantage of the city’s plan. Adams’ truck, dubbed Beach Buns and Bites, will offer sliders, burgers and even some fresh seafood.

Another food truck, Rolling Spring Roll in Farmingdale, has been so successful that its owner, Joe Bui, is opening up a Vietnamese restaurant this summer. His crispy spring rolls are a crowd pleaser.

There’s no telling what a successful food truck can lead to in the future.

Joe Bui’s Rolling Spring Roll food truck, which serves Vietnamese dishes, inspired him to go all-in and open an actual restaurant. He’ll still be operating the food truck, but away from the restaurant, which remains as-yet nameless.

“I did have a great following,” he says, “people did like Vietnamese food and I wanted to bring it out more.”

Food truck operators admit that the food-on-wheels lifestyle also comes with some hard-to-swallow challenges—some so difficult to overcome that they forced 42-year-old Liam Beardslee, who sold tacos out of Lumpy’s Food Truck in Bay Shore, out of the business.

“It didn’t really catch on Long Island,” Beardslee says. “People didn’t really understand the food trucks that weren’t hot dog trucks.”

Somehow, Baez of Rollin’ Cubans has found the opposite—a re-energized niche among hungry suburbanites.

Baez, who is Cuban on his father’s side, begins each day early in the morning. He walks his dog, then spends the next four hours preparing empanadas, roast pork and Ropa Vieja, while also readying several Cubano sandwiches for the lunchtime rush. It’s common for him to find a long line forming at the curb as he’s pulling up.

The Cubano Sandwich, the most popular item on the menu, is stuffed with roast pork shoulder, cured ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard. Baez presses the sandwich on the grill and repeats the process constantly during a busy day.

“Cuban [sandwiches] at other places…[aren’t] as good,” says 27-year-old Benjamin Gutt, visiting Rollin’ Cubans for the second time that day. “You can take the meat off the sandwich and eat it and it’s amazing. Just everything about it is good.”

Another crowd-pleaser is the roast pork sandwich, overflowing with pepper jack cheese, sweet plantains and hot-and-sweet buffalo sauce.

Baez also prepares custom dishes. One of his regulars asked him to add Ropa Vieja and plantains to the Cubano sandwich, for example. The patron enjoyed it so much that he named it the “Super Cuban,” Baez laughs.

Sure, there’s been road bumps along the way for Baez. Sandy crushed business, and winter forced him to close shop for nearly two months. But Baez is back in Hicksville, and he’s preparing for what he believes will be a busy summer.

But Long Islanders interested in roadside Cuban cuisine will have to be patient, he warns.

“I hate to make people wait,” says Baez, “but at the same time, if you want something good, it’s worth waiting for.”

http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/04/27/road-warriors-gourmet-food-trucks-roll-out-quality-across-l-i/

(credit: NYSF)

We first heard about the Mamu Thai Noodle Truck during their Kickstarter campaign over the winter. Siwat, the owner and chef, was trying to raise the final $11,000 needed to get the truck on the street. Luckily, he succeeded.

Mamu has been serving lunch and dinner in Brooklyn over the past couple of weeks, plus lunch once in Manhattan. Unfortunately, our schedules just didn’t match until yesterday, their second time in Manhattan.

The menu is small for now, but they expect to be adding items as operations get smoother. There are 4 people working in the truck, so waits are minimal, except for the amount of time it takes to cook a dish.

As we always do our first time at a new truck, we asked what they recommended. Siwat suggested the pad siew, which we got with shrimp for $9. You can also get it with tofu for $7 or chicken for $8.

(credit: NYSF)

Siwat got the bug to cook and serve noodles after visiting family in Bangkok, where they own 3 noodle shops. He is using family recipes handed down over generations on the truck. It doesn’t get more authentic than that!

For the uninitiated, pad siew is a stir-fried dish made with flat rice noodles. The name translates as “fried with soy sauce”. (Thank you Wikipedia.)

The noodles were slippery, but not overcooked or mushy, and there were a lot of them. We ended up pretty full by the end of lunch.

(credit: NYSF)

The noodles were cooked in a light, sweet sauce which was almost like a glaze.

There were about 1/2 dozen shrimp, which were all plump and juicy. In Thai noodle dishes, as in most of Southeast Asia, the protein is a smaller part of the overall dish than in Western cooking. Noodles are the main attraction here.

In addition to noodles and protein, there were scrambled eggs and Chinese broccoli. We love eggs in almost anything, but what really got our attention was the Chinese broccoli. We’re not usually big vegetable eaters, but the Chinese broccoli was sliced into thin pieces length-wise, and still had a really nice crunch. The juxtaposition of the crisp Chinese broccoli and the soft, slippery noodles was very enjoyable

(credit: NYSF)

On the drink menu, Mamu had cans of mangosteen and lychee fruit drinks for $3. We got the mangosteen juice drink, which struck us as a cross between grape and apple juice. It was non-carbonated and a little too sweet.

Just as we got our change, we noticed a vat of Thai iced tea next to the register. Noticing our interest, they offered a sample taste. Yum! That’s what we’re getting next time.

The Mamu Thai Noodle Truck has been out regularly for a few weeks now. Their intention is to start hitting different neighborhoods once the kinks are worked out, but they seemed pretty kink-free when we were there. Maybe they will do lunch in Manhattan and dinner in Brooklyn. That seems like a good solution.

You can follow the Mamu Thai Noodle Truck on twitter here, facebook here, or on our Mobile Munchies twitter feed.

(credit: NYSF)

http://newyorkstreetfood.com/41277/nysf-first-look-pad-siew-from-the-mamu-thai-noodle-truck/

The line for a Korilla food truck in Manhattan (Ilya Marritz/WNYC)

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2013/apr/17/bill-make-peace-food-truck-wars/#

Yes, tomorrow is the happiest day of the year – FREE Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s.

You can find participating locations here.

There are 23 locations listed in the NYC area, but Manhattan only has 3: Rockefeller Center Concourse, Macy’s Herald Square (4th floor) and Broadway at 104th St.

There are a few locations in the outer boroughs, and a bunch in NJ and on LI.

Enjoy!

http://newyorkstreetfood.com/41054/free-ben-jerrys-cones-tomorrow-49/

]]> http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2013/04/new-york-ny-free-ben-jerrys-cones-tomorrow-49/feed/ 0 http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2013/03/new-york-ny-celebrate-japan-week-at-grand-central-station/ http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2013/03/new-york-ny-celebrate-japan-week-at-grand-central-station/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:00:52 +0000 MFN Editor #1 http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/?p=46393 By NYSF Contributor | New York Street Food

Sunrise Mart Ekiben

We’re a day late on this one, but you can still enjoy Japan Week today and tomorrow at Grand Central Station.

In addition to activities such as koto music, Japanese fairy tales, and a kimono show, there will be plenty of great food options. One of the most interesting is ekiben.

Ekiben are bento box meals which are specifically sold in railway stations throughout Japan. Ekiben often contain local specialties from the region in which they are sold, and their debut in Japan Week will allow attendees to experience a culinary tour of Japan’s diverse regions. Some train stations are so famous for their ekiben that people make the trip to that station just for the delicious meal.

There will also be tonkotsu ramen, which is made by boiling pork bones, usually for 12 hours or more. Boy does that look great!

For more information on Japan Week (which last for 3 days?), click here. You can see the full Schedule of Activities here.

Tonkotsu Ramen

http://newyorkstreetfood.com/40480/celebrate-japan-week-at-grand-central-station/

MANHATTAN — A month after City Councilwoman Margaret Chin supported the shutdown of 20 SoHo food vendors, she’s set to introduce legislation Wednesday to limit where food trucks can park citywide.

Chin’s bill would make it illegal for food trucks to set up shop within 15 feet of a fire hydrant, an issue residents say they have pointed out to officials for years as a potential safety hazard.

Chin said she wants to minimize the effect of food vendors on public safety and quality of life, as the trucks produce noise and emit fumes.

“It is imperative that we update and strengthen regulations as mobile food trucks become more prevalent in our city,” Chin said in a statement.

The proposed law would fine vendors $250 the first time they are caught parking too close to a fire hydrant. If caught a second time within six months, the offending food truck would be impounded and the vendor hit with a $500 ticket.

The plan to impose new fines related to vending follows the Feb. 27 passage of new legislation by the City Council to slash vending fines in half, in order reduce their burden on often-struggling workers.

But Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed to veto the bill, which he slammed as “one of the stupider things I’ve ever heard.” He argued it would encourage vendors to break the rules.

The law suggested by Chin would take effect 120 days after it is enacted.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130320/soho/food-truck-parking-would-be-limited-under-proposed-vending-legislation

credit : NYSF

The Calexico Empire is expanding yet again!

The Vendley Brothers, who won the 2008 Vendy Cup for their great Calexico Carne Asada food carts, are opening an outpost on the Lower East Side.

If you are not familiar with Calexico, what are you waiting for!

They had 2 food carts in Soho for a long time, but moved one to Worth Square a while back, at Broadway & 25th St.

At this point, Calexico also has 2 restaurants in Brooklyn – one in Greenpoint and one in Red Hook.

Now they will be opening at 153 Rivington St, which is between Suffolk & Clinton Streets.

According to their twitter account, it will be opening in a couple of weeks. This is a hopping neighborhood with a lot of nightlife that should be very welcoming to a restaurant like Calexico Carne Asada.

Good luck guys!

credit : NYSF

http://newyorkstreetfood.com/40158/calexico-opening-a-manhattan-restaurant/