street chefs throughout new york city vie to cart off the 2009 vendy award (link)
08.16.09 - ny daily news - by ben chapman

as i mentioned a few weeks back, the vendy awards, nyc's awards ceremony for street vendors, are coming up near the end of september. every year, the vendys bring together five of the city's top street vendors & award one of them the coveted vendy cup. the other four vendors are executed via a rusty guillotine. JK! no french revolutionary style executions! in actuality, winning is obviously the ultimate goal, but even just being nominated can help the vendors stand out from the thousands in nyc. so yeah...the five finalists have been announced!

the ny daily news' ben chapman totes has jokes. well...one joke. he starts this article with "it's a street fight." get it? the five vendy nominees are street vendors & they're now in competition for the award! if i was him, i would have peppered my article with copious references to the rolling stones' "street fighting man" or maybe made some food/street fight puns, but i guess that's why he writes for the daily news & likely gets a paycheck for doing so, while i write a blog & get paid in satisfaction.

this year's finalists include astoria's falafel king, midtown's biryani cart & jamaican dutchy cart, red hook's country boys food truck & the flatiron district's rickshaw dumpling truck. freddy zeidaies, who runs the falafel king cart, is pretty damn confident. "i'm going to win," he says. he "plays belly-dancing music at his cart and does a few moves when the mood strikes him," but those moves will have to be pretty sweet if he wants to win. we're talking some reverse moonwalk type shizz.

his competition's fare includes the biryani cart's cati roll ("a thin indian flatbread wrapped around fillings such as spicy bombay chicken and vegetarian potatoes and cauliflower"), jamaican dutchy's grilled jerk chicken, the country boys truck's "huarache, an oversize open-faced burrito that's a specialty (in) puebla, mexico" & the rickshaw dumpling truck's, um...dumplings. that's some stiff competition for a dude selling falafel. good luck, freddy! you know what? just in case, i suggest taking the next month to learn the worm. judges love the worm, as long as it's not in your falafel.