NYC Food Truck Lunch: Tandoori Salmon From Trini-Paki Boys

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

One of the longest-running and most consistent street vendors in NYC is the Trini-Paki Boys cart on West 43rd St, just east of 6th Ave. In some parts of the world, the cart's name might be considered an insult, but here it's used in loving tribute. The owners are a married couple from Trinidad and Pakistan, and they named the cart after their boys.

Anyway, the reason the cart has have been around for so long is because of the food, not the name. Caribbean and Pakistani dishes are served, and they are both done well. It also doesn't hurt that prices are more than reasonable.

There's a menu on the side of the cart, but you have to look at the daily specials to see what's available the day you go. In our case, it was chicken or salmon tandoori, stew salt fish, stew chicken, baked shark, stewed eggplant, and a couple of other dishes. We ordered the salmon tandoori.

Most dishes come in 3 sizes, small for $6, medium for $8 and large for $10. Medium is usually enough for us, and we have a big appetite.

The medium salmon tandoori came with thick 2 pieces of salmon, plus a small salad and a few veggies on the side. For sauces, they have the usual white and hot sauces, but another thing that sets the Trini-Paki Boys cart apart is their tamarind sauce, which we ordered.

The two thick pieces of baked salmon had that subtle tandoori flavor. The fish was moist, but also flaky. We would love to see salmon tandoori more often in Indian and Pakistani restaurants. Tandoori chicken is much more common.

The tamarind sauce was both sweet and spicy, but be careful, because it really brings the heat.

Another nice surprise was the rice underneath all the food. It was along the lines of Caribbean "rice and peas", meaning it was flavored with cinnamon, clove and allspice, although it didn't have any "peas" (beans).

We're big seafood lovers, so the Trini-Paki Boys cart is a welcome stop on our lunch route. They don't have any social media presence, but you can find the cart on the south side of West 43rd St, just east of 6th Ave every weekday for lunch. When the weather's nicer, there's usually a small line, but it moves quickly.