NYC Food Truck Lunch: Roast Pork Cachapa From Cachapas On Wheels
Perry, the founder of New York Street Food, brings you his latest review on New York City street food.
We recently came across a Venezuelan food truck on the street, and their offerings looked pretty interesting. We're obviously not the only ones who think so, since just this week, Cachapas On Wheels was nominated as a Finalist for the prestigious Vendy Cup, which takes place on Sept. 17th. Vendy Awards tickets are still available, which we recommend if you want to experience street food nirvana.
We found Cachapas On Wheels on 47th St just east of Park Ave. Every weekday, there are usually 4-5 food trucks on this block serving lunch, with cuisines from all over the world.
But cachapas are only one of the items that Cachapas On Wheels serves. Whether you're getting a cachapa, a yoyo, a tacucho, a patacon, a pepito or an arepa, first you choose a protein, then choose a vehicle to put it on, then choose a sauce. Since cachapa is in the name of the food truck itself, we followed our rule and ordered the dish that was in the vendor's name, which cost $9.
For the uninitiated, a cachapa is a sandwich served on sweet corn pancakes, kind of like very thin corn fritters. You can also have your sandwich served on fried plantains (patacon), in an arepa (cornmeal patty), as a burrito, or on a hero. The full menu goes into more detail.
Service was a little slow, with lunch taking a little more than 10 minutes to pick up after ordering. That's not much time if you're sitting in a restaurant, but standing at a food truck waiting for them to call your name, it feels longer.
Opening the cachapa, you can see the meat was covered with lettuce, tomato and mayo. Don't worry, there was plenty of meat underneath the cover of salad.
The roast pork in the cachapa was delicious. It was "pulled" and served with their signature pink sauce (which wasn't pink, btw). The sauce was a cross between ketchup and bbq sauce, with a sweetness not usually found in either.
Sweet corn pancakes were a great way to eat the roast, shredded pork, but we did need to use the fork and knife that were included. The corn pancakes were too thin to pick up the cachapa with your hands without it falling apart.
For our first visit to Cachapas On Wheels, we were impressed. Lunch was tasty, filling, unique and reasonably priced. We're definitely going back to try other types of Venezuelan food.
You can find Cachapas On Wheels on Twitter here and on Facebook here. They also have a sit-down restaurant called Cachapas y Mas, located at 107 Dyckman St in Inwood, not far from The Cloisters, which is always a great place to spend the day.
