Halal beats dosa in New York food fight
By IRSHAD SALIM
NJ, OCT 29 - Spicy Halal flipped over veggie Dosa in Gotham City's second
annual street food fight, a unique event held last week that culminated in an
Oscar-like award called Vendy’s for the city’s 12,000 pushcart
vendors.
Hundreds of connoisseurs paid $50 each to sample the spicy
grilled chicken and lamb over basmati rice of Sammy’s Halal.
New Yorkers also queued to try out Dosa Man's vegan dosas and samosas.
He was the hot favorite, having been a finalist last year also.
But the four Pakistani friends who run the Sammy’s Halal
Cart on 73rd Street and Broadway in Jackson Heights, Queens, won the coveted Vendy
Cup, beating out three other finalists with their sizzling spice-filled Halal dishes.
Sri Lankan
Thiru Kumar, the 'Dosa Man' won second place. He operates the only dosa
cart in North America - six days a week in Manhattan's Greenwich
Village on Washington Square South
and Sullivan Street.
The awards ceremony, hosted by the Street Vendor Project of the Urban
Justice Center last week, was meant to raise awareness of the daily
travails vendors face. Sean Basinski, the patron saint of the
footloose chefs de cuisine, spoke on behalf of the city’s 10,000
street vendors, highlighting their problems.
Twenty-three percent of vendors list police harassment as their
biggest problem.Until a year ago, the
four Pakistani-Americans, who won the Vendy Cup, drove taxis. Now they run four
food carts, and in a few months they’ll start operating another near
Broadway and Lafayette Streets in Noho, they said.
 “This is my hobby,” said Muhammad Anjum, “so I love to eat and I love
to cook.” As his partners,
Sami-ul Noor, aka Sammy, Shafiq and Arshad, all
Pakistani-Americans settled in New York worked the grill of Sammy’s
Halal cart, a long line waited to sample the chicken with rice.
Here's what some of (Sammy) Noor's fans said about his aromatic,
flavorful dishes:
"The cart is like a community center for the neighborhood's Indian,
Bangladeshi and Pakistani residents. ... The spices on the chicken
explode in your mouth and leave you coming back for more. The red
sauce will clear your sinuses. ... Sammy's chicken and rice is
fabulously tasty, uniquely spiced and out of this world."
This year's other finalists were:
_The Vendley brothers (Jesse, Brian and David) who've only been in the
food vendor business for six months, for their "Calexico," authentic
Mexican fare in SoHo.
_Maria Piedad Cano, known as the "the Arepa Lady," for her "succulent
_ crunchy on top _ buttery and oozing with cheese" Colombian
corn-based arepas, also served in Jackson Heights.
And of course, Thiru "Dosa Man" Kumar, last year's crowd pleaser for his
Sri-Lankan-style vegan fare, based at Washington Square Park South in
Greenwich Village.
|
