NYC Food Truck Lunch: Klassiker Wurst From Kelvin's Burgers and Brats
Perry, the founder of New York Street Food, brings you his latest review on New York City street food.
Over the years, 5th Ave from around 17th St to 22nd St has been a good stretch in which to find tasty street food. New food trucks and carts sometimes park there to "work out the kinks" in their first few weeks of operation, because midtown and the Financial District are both much higher-pressure environments in which to operate.
Kelvin's Burgers and Brats has been in business for a month, and so far they park every weekday on the west side of 5th Ave at 22nd St. They are a proud German-American business, melding the American and German flags on the side of their truck, and sticking a small German flag into our bauernwurst.
On the menu were 4 kinds of burgers and 6 kinds of wurst. There was also a Daily Special burger not on the menu. Any time we have the option of ordering a wurst, it's a done deal. As the well-known chef and food enthusiast Anthony Bourdain says, "There's nothing better than meat in tube form".
To make things even better, the wurst is sourced from Schaller and Weber, the Upper East Side institution where those in the know go for high-quality German provisions.
There were so many choices, but we decided to go with the bauernwurst (also known as the Klassiker) for $6. We also added a cucumber salad for $3.
Bauernwurst is also known as "farmer's sausage" and is generally made with pork and beef, onion, garlic and marjoram. It is a coarse and smoky sausage, and is probably our favorite type of wurst.
The bauernwurst was grilled enough so there was a crispy, juicy snap to each bite. The sausage was more seasoned than bratwurst, and had a mildly spicy flavor.
German sauerkraut was served on the bauernwurst, and we had the choice of mild, medium or spicy mustard. We chose the medium mustard, which was perfect for us. There was a little bit of a kick, but the mustard was not overly spicy.
The bauernwurst was served on a pretzel bun. This type of roll was thick and bulky, but the sausage stood up to it just fine. Everything came through loud and clear in the taste department.
On the side of the wurst was a dill pickle spear, which is always welcome with lunch.
The choices for side dishes were pommes frites, a large pretzel with mustard or nutella(!), or cucumber salad. Since we've been trying to eat healthier, we opted for the cucumber salad with sour cream and dill. This was a nice, refreshing side dish, was not too filling, and was certainly better for our body than fries or a large pretzel.
You can find Kelvin's Burgers and Brats on Instagram here, on Facebook here, and their website is here. We cannot find a Twitter account.
All-in-all, we're thrilled to have found Kelvin's Burgers and Brats for lunch. The food served is of a high quality and reasonably priced. Now if we can only get them to come up to midtown one day a week, life would be great!
