NYC Food Truck Lunch: Kua Gai From Mamu Thai Noodle
Perry, the founder of New York Street Food, brings you his latest review on New York City street food.
Mamu Thai Noodle came to our attention a few years ago when the owner, Siwat, turned to Kickstarter to raise the last $11,000 he needed to open the truck. It's hard to turn someone down who named the truck after his mother, and uses family recipes that date back several generations.
We previously enjoyed a tasty Chicken Pad Thai at Mamu, which you can get with shrimp or tofu, if preferred. This time we went for the Daily Special of Kua Gai, which cost $11.
Kua gai is made with wide rice noodles, which are similar in size and taste to Chinese chow fun noodles, if you're not familiar with Thai food.
The noodles are stir-fried with a number of ingredients that are added to the dish during cooking. These include egg, chicken, sweet radish, garlic and scallions.
Light soy sauce is also added to the dish, which is then served on a bed of lettuce.
Stir-fried is the operative word with kau gai, with evidence of frying found on the noodles, egg and chicken.
While this is mainly a noodle dish, there was plenty of sliced chicken breast once we got beneath the top layer of noodles. However, the chicken itself was fairly plain-tasting. Our suggestion would be to either use a stronger marinade on the chicken breast, or use chicken thighs, which are a little more flavorful.
Overall, we enjoyed lunch, with the noodles having a springiness (if that's a word) even after being stir-fried. Of course, the egg, scallion and garlic didn't hurt either.
The portion was more than enough to keep us full and happy until dinner.
You can find the Mamu Thai Noodle on Twitter here, on Facebook here, and their website is here. Just look for the elephants on the colorful truck.
They generally serve lunch in the Financial District and Brooklyn, trying to stay out of the way of Midtown police, who ticket food trucks on a regular basis. Sometimes they sneak up to the Flatiron District, which is where we found them.
