New York’s ‘Desi Food Truck’
While New York City offers a considerable variety of Indian restaurants, the mobile food truck is mostly associated with falafel, shawarma, tacos, and ice-creams. Apart from the dosa cart at the New York University campus in downtown Manhattan, few desi mobile food vendors have captured the imagination.
Alamgeer Elahi hopes to reverse the trend. Walk down Fifth Avenue and, at the intersection of 27th Street, it's hard to miss a yellow van plastered with posters of Bollywood stars. Peek closer and you see the metallic surface adorned with Pakistani tribal art, a roof decorated with embroidered curtains and an unmistakable whiff of fresh lachha parathas.
Anand Kumar, 31, who works in a technology firm in Jersey City, had just bought himself a Kolkata Biryani on a Tuesday afternoon.
"I've had the kati roll here before and it's phenomenal,” says Mr. Kumar, who is a second-generation Indian living in Manhattan.
Mr. Elahi says a "significant" number of non-Indians also frequent the truck, which he started operating last month and calls Desi Food Truck. One of them Seybou Diallo, a banker who works on Fifth Avenue, said the cart was "convenient, especially when I need to grab a quick bite and rush back to work."
Mr. Elahi, who also has another truck on Sixth Avenue, at the intersection of 40th Street, says he hopes to cash in on New York city's hectic pace.
"Many people don't have time for relaxed lunches here. And many would rather spend less," he said.
Mr. Elahi is in his forties and originally from the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, where his parents moved from Pakistani Punjab. He has lived in New York City for 18 years, during which time he's dabbled in the mobile-phone business, real estate and food. Apart from managing the truck, he's also a one-man marketing department, coaxing passers-by to sample "authentic Indian delicacies."
Food-carts are a competitive business and the economics is tricky. Mr. Elahi worries he has under-priced himself—the kati rolls cost $4 compared with the $4.75 charged by the established Kati Roll Company.
"We opened on July 4 and haven't broken even yet," he said. "So I may increase the price in the next few months."
He also hopes to cater to the needs of the younger, partying crowd.
"You see parties finishing in the early mornings, especially in the weekends, and a lot of hungry people at the end. We're open till 6 a.m. on the weekends," he said.
The menu is welcoming. The kati rolls are meatier—and cheaper—than what you get at restaurants in the neighbourhood. His fillings come wrapped in traditional lachha parathas, a multilayered unleavened bread made with lashings of ghee, or clarified butter, unlike some joints that use rotis and chapatis as substitutes.
The dal and rice, with pickle, raw onions and tomatoes on the side, has a tender home-made quality to it but what really blows one away is the sandesh, a traditional Bengali sweet, which Mr. Elahi hopes to popularize in Manhattan. Maybe it'll eventually get him a place on one of the annual lists that pick the best of the city's many, many food trucks.
He also has big weekend plans to serve Kachchi Biryani, made with goat, a Hyderabadi special which needs to be slow cooked for 3-4 hours.
"Now that's a biryani," he says with a glint in his eyes.
This piece was first published in the Wall Street Journal website