NYC Food Truck Lunch: Honey Glazed Chicken From Steak Freak

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

We first tried Steak Freak about 15 months ago, when they had only been on the street for 2 weeks. As you would expect, we tried a steak dish for lunch that day (steak frites) and enjoyed it. For our 2nd visit, we wanted to try the honey glazed chicken for $8. You can see the Steak Freak menu here.

The line for Steak Freak is usually one of the longer lines of all the food carts that populate 50th St, just west of 6th Ave. Was it because service was slow or because they are one of the better street vendors on that block? We'll soon find out.

It took about 15 minutes from getting on line to receiving lunch. When we opened the container, there was a nice amount of chicken over white rice, plus a side salad that was more colorful than usual.

The chicken was made with chicken thighs. They were lightly breaded, and had a sweet chili sauce glaze. The dish was finished off with a sprinkle of sesame seeds.

Chicken thighs are used by some chefs because they are juicier than breast meat, and don't dry out as easily. The chicken itself was tasty, but it was a tad overcooked. The chicken would have been better with a little less cooking time, but lunch was still pleasant. Add some light breading and sweet chili sauce to almost anything and we're happy.

Sweet chili sauce can range from mild to very spicy. At Steak Freak, it was mildly spicy at first, but built up to moderately spicy by the end of lunch.

The white rice was decent, but it improved substantially once the sauce started mixing in with it.

The salad was comprised of iceberg lettuce and radicchio, and a light dressing was added, making it better than most street vendor salads.

You can find Steak freak on 50th St just west of 6th Ave weekdays for lunch. Their Twitter is here and their Facebook is here.

As to whether the long lines were because of slow service or better than average food, it was a little of both, plus a third reason.

Each dish was individually cooked, which takes time, but the quality of the food was good, too. We also realized Steak Freak cart has the best photos of their dishes on the block. If someone doesn't know which cart to order from, great food photos can make a difference. Of course, that won't help with repeat business if the food doesn't deliver, but the tourists on line behind us seemed pretty happy with their meals.