Food in Mouth

Kwik Meal and eating less

With all the new food carts that arrive on the streets of New York City every month, it's only natural that some of the older carts would feel left behind. I walked by the Kwik Meal cart a couple of weeks ago during my lunch break, and there was just one person in line. It was the perfect opportunity to try this cart. I used to work right next to this cart for two years and never ever tried it because of the price and because there used to always be a long line. Maybe random people walking by would think something was wrong with a cart that has few customers during the lunch rush, but any avid reader of Midtown Lunch would know that's not the case with Kwik Meal cart. When Midtown Lunch conducted Street Meat Palooza 2 this past summer, Kwik Meal proved to be as formidable as ever.

I think a lot of people avoid Kwik Meal because your usual street meat plate of 'lamb over rice' costs $7.50. That's $2.50 above many places. With a price like that, each bite of street meat becomes harder to swallow. The idea of street meat is that it's supposed to be a cheap, fast, and tasty option compared to more traditional food outlets. When the price starts to creep up towards the price of a tossed salad, the value proposition changes completely. This is why I've never tried Kwik Meal until a few weeks ago.

If you don't want to break the bank and you still want to try the food at Kwik Meal, just get the chicken over rice. While lamb over rice requires a premium, the chicken over rice deal is only $6. That's a reasonable sum for those who hesitate to spend more than the usual $5 dollars for street meat.

Obviously since I'm a cheap dude, I could talk about the cost of food for days on end. One thing to keep in mind is that some places justify the higher price, while some places don't. When you look at Kwik Meal's food, it definitely shows why they're superior than most carts. The important thing to note is that they cook the chicken really well. They're able to get a nice caramelization on most pieces of chicken. The rice is cooked well and the white sauce they give is tastier than most because it's not heavy on mayo. Overall I really like the chicken over rice at Kwik Meal and my only complaint is that they give you slightly less food than other carts and the price.

And since I have a little time, let's talk about random things for a paragraph or two. Did anyone else see the Calorie Restriction Experiment story in the Sunday Magazine of The New York Times this week? It's really interesting to me because the experiment focuses on what happens to your body if you reduce your caloric consumption by 25%. There have been previous experiments that showed calorie restriction prolonged the lives of lab animals. So the experimentors wanted to do an experiment on humans to see if they could replicate some of the same effects. The article gets in depth about how the experiment is set up and how they track people's progress. This experiment really appeals to me because they measuring the calorie restriction, and its effects on health. Notice it's not an experiment about whether it's organic or anything like that. It's just about eating less calories. Obviously this means the test subjects probably eat smaller portions and eat less calorie dense foods like nuts and bacon. Apparently good health has nothing to do with high fructose corn syrup or foods with high cholesterol... it's just the amount of food you consume. This is a really really powerful idea. The experimentors believe most of the population could not keep up with such a diet because it requires crazy good discipline.

I like it when data cool things like that about food. It also helps me in believing that this organic movement helps only as much as the amount of organic food you consume. Reducing our chances of cardiovascular disease has nothing to do with a tomato from Monsantos versus a tomato from the farmers market. It's all a matter of the total amount of food. This is big news, but of course the study is not completely over so the results are pending. Still, with what they've seen in lab animals and current results from the human test subjects, it really looks like they might be onto something.

Kwik Meal Cart (the original)
45th st and 6th ave.
New York, NY 10036
Map

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Posted by Danny on October 12 2009 at 9:35 am