NY Food Truck Lunch: Chicken Satay & Vanilla Panna Cotta from Now Eat This!
Perry, the voice behind New York Street Food, brings you his latest review on New York City food trucks.
If you're interested in eating a healthy lunch from a food truck, Now Eat This! is a good option. All menu items are supposed to be under 350 calories, and are based on recipes from a cookbook of the same name by Rocco Di Spirito.
Similar to his UK colleague Jamie Oliver, Rocco is on a mission to teach people, especially children, how to cook and eat healthily. One of the first things they teach is that food can be delicious and healthy - these two things are not mutually exclusive.
I've tried a few dishes from the Now Eat This! truck since it first came out last November. Some, like the chicken broccoli stir fry, were excellent. Other items, like the lasagna bolognese, were okay.
More: NYC's 7 Best Food Trucks
With a few new items on the menu, it was time for a return trip for the chicken satay ($9) and vanilla panna cotta with caramel sauce ($3) for dessert.
More: NYC's 5 Best Food Truck Desserts
Either the handwritten menu was marked wrong or someone can't add, but I was charged $11 for lunch instead of $12. I don't know if that's a promising start or not, but I'll take it.
In Asian restaurants, chicken (or beef) satay is usually an appetizer with a few thin, grilled strips of meat on skewers, a thick peanut sauce and a vinegary, syrupy sauce with cucumbers and onions.
More: NYC's 10 Best Thai Restaurants
This dish was similar in some respects and different in others.
There were 3 skewers with grilled chicken, but they were far from thin. These were among the meatiest chicken satay skewers I've had. The white-meat chicken was nicely grilled and quite thick, with the thickness helping keep in the juices. Three of these skewers was a substantial lunch.
The sauce did not taste like a peanut sauce. There might have been some peanuts in the sauce, but it actually reminded me of a tangy, creamy Italian dressing, but spicier.
The skewers were laid on top of a large salad with lots of iceberg lettuce, half a dozen cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices and peanut pieces. Some of the dressing from the chicken satay was also used as dressing.
After finishing lunch, I didn't really need dessert, but the vanilla panna cotta with caramel sauce looked too good to pass up for $3. The caramel sauce on top had that burnt caramel taste, which I mean as a compliment. It wasn't a sugary sweet caramel sauce, there was some depth.
Under the caramel sauce, vanilla bean was quite visibly speckled throughout the panna cotta, which was cool and creamy. This was a tasty dessert, especially the bites with both panna cotta and caramel sauce.
You can find Now Eat This! on Twitter here. They hit various neighborhoods in Manhattan Mon-Thurs.
Every Friday, they go to a different NYC-area school to teach kids how to cook and eat healthy food. Now that's a worthy cause.
