NYC Food Truck Lunch: Roast Chicken From Red Olive

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

Our travels recently took us down to the Financial District, where we ran across the Red Olive food truck parked on Water St. just north of Hanover Square. According to their Twitter feed, Red Olive has only been open a few weeks.

The menu was small, and mostly Greek and American, with roast chicken, roast tilapia, cheese steaks and burgers, with a couple of daily specials. Not knowing the truck, we went for a simple roast chicken dish for $8.

The platter was assembled with a small salad, roasted potatoes, rice, and one-and-a-half chicken breasts that were sliced somewhat thickly and placed on the rice. Two ladles of au jus were poured over the meat to keep it moist and juicy, and a mix of herbs was sprinkled on the sliced chicken.

Even though the chicken breast had been roasted and juices poured over it, the end pieces were still too dry. The rest of the chicken was fairly juicy, and the herbs added well to the flavor of the chicken.

The sprinkled herbs were mostly oregano and parsley, but we also found a star anise in the rice, which surprised us.

The white rice was cooked just fine. It benefit from the flavor of the au jus poured over the chicken, which seeped into the rice, too.

The roasted potatoes were nice, but the small salad was nothing special. We definitely enjoyed the potatoes.

Based on this visit, we can say that lunch from Red Olive will not rock your world, but for $8, we got a solid, filling, decent meal.

We found the Red Olive food truck downtown, but they also come up to midtown and to other food truck hot spots such as Hudson and King. You can find the Red Olive food truck on Twitter here and on Facebook here.