NYC Food Truck Lunch: Souvlaki Platter From Lil' Zeus Lunch Box

Perry, the founder of New York Street Food, brings you his latest review on New York City street food.

50th St from 6th Ave going towards 7th Ave always had a bunch of food trucks and carts, but they usually line the north side of the block. A Greek food cart called Lil Zeus Lunch Box opened about 3 months ago on the south side of 50th St, close to 6th Ave.

The menu is traditional Greek street food, with pork, chicken or lamb grilled on skewers over charcoal. You can get platters, sandwiches on pita (gyros), burgers and salads, along with sides like Greek fries.

Greek street food is not new to NYC, with Souvlaki GR, Uncle Gussy's and Tony Dragonas all being nominated (and Souvlaki GR winning) various Vendy Awards over the years. If you're going to compete with these street food heavyweights, you need to be excellent.

As we like to do with new vendors, we asked what they recommended. The answer was pork souvlaki, which we opted for in a platter instead of a sandwich. $8 for a souvlaki platter is a good price.

The sauces offered were tzaziki, hot sauce and bbq sauce. Of course we got the tzaziki, and asked for hot sauce on the side.

The pork had that charcoal-grilled flavor, and was juicy and tender. It was not dry or overcooked at all. Good job on the pork souvlaki.

The tzaziki sauce had a little bite to it from garlic, which is how it should be. We took our eye off the ball, and should have asked for a little more tzaziki sauce on the meat, although that costs an extra $.75.

The rice was ok, nothing special, but they tossed in a few french fries for good measure.

Greek salad was a nice way to finish lunch. Lettuce, cucumber, tomato, red onions, feta cheese and balsamic vinaigrette was a real, refreshing Greek salad.

Lil Zeus may be a small cart, but they serve a big, delicious lunch. We can still taste the charcoal-grilled pork souvlaki as we're writing this.

It's been said real New Yorkers won't walk more than 5 blocks for anything. While there are plenty of good Greek street food options for lunch, none of them are within 5 blocks of Lil Zeus, so they won't be encroaching on any of the other vendors we mentioned above. Good food is important for return customers, but so is location, and Lil Zeus has both going for them.

You can find Lil Zeus on Facebook here, but there is currently a holding page for a website, and we can't find them on Twitter. No matter, they are in the same location every day, 50th St just west of 6th Ave.