NYC Food Truck Lunch: Curry Beef Banh Mi From The Paris Sandwich Truck

Perry, the voice behind New York Street Food, brings you his latest review on New York City food trucks.

When we travel to L.A., there are at least 3 food trucks serving banh mi, the Vietnamese sandwiches that we love. It's about time that NYC finally has a banh mi truck of its own.

Paris Sandwich has 2 storefronts in Chinatown, and now they have a truck. Actually the Paris Sandwich Truck was around last year in Jersey City, but this year they are firmly ensconced in the Big Apple. Guess they finally got that permit.

There are about 6 different banh mi sandwiches on the menu to choose from, and they have a couple of rice bowls for the bread-averse.

We went for the curry beef baguette, which cost $8, as all the banh mi sandwiches cost.

One of the reasons we love banh mi is because of the pickled carrots and daikon, which give the sandwich a cool, vinegary snap. Fresh sprigs of cilantro are another important part of the taste.

A lot of Western cooking uses only the cilantro leaves, but Eastern cooking tends to use the entire cilantro stem and leaves. This is something we learned in a cooking class we took last year on Indian street food.

The cool, sharp veggies are a nice contrast with the curry beef, which comes in the form of ground beef in this sandwich.

The ground beef had a nice curry flavor, but it wasn't overpowering. The taste was tempered by coconut milk, which is great when mixed with a curry sauce.

There was also an underlying intensity that we believe came from fish sauce, a staple of Vietnamese and Thai cooking used to give dishes added depth or "umami".

The last component to talk about is the baguette. This one was generally nice and soft, but there was a little crunchiness on the crust that provided some texture. Without the crunchiness of the crust, the bread would have been too wimpy.

As a final touch, the baguette was buttered before anything was put onto it. That added even more richness to the taste.

You can find the Paris Sandwich Truck on Twitter here or on our Mobile Munchies Twitter feed.  Their website is here,

We're glad to have the Paris Sandwich Truck on the NYC streets, and we look forward to trying even more of the menu.