NYC Food Truck Lunch: Jerk Beef Platter From Caribbean King

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

Make room for another street food king in NYC. The original and reigning street food king is the Vendy-award winning King of Falafel and Shawarma. We also recently found the King of Gyro across from the Plaza Hotel, but his food was not on the same level as the King of Falafel and Shawarma. Now we can add another contender, the Caribbean King food truck.

The Caribbean King food truck has been operating mainly downtown, but we caught them on their first midtown foray last Friday, on Broadway between 55th & 56th St.

Similar to many other street food vendors, Caribbean King takes their native cuisine and puts it on tacos, burritos and rice bowls. We usually have jerk chicken at Caribbean places, so we decided to switch things up and get a jerk beef rice plate for $10. You can see their full menu here.

Each platter comes with rice and beans, steamed veggies, and a fried plantain.

The beef was cut up into small pieces, and was seasoned with the chef's special jerk sauce, which packed quite a punch. Don't get this dish unless you really like spicy food. We were sweating a little after eating this lunch. It tasted of black pepper, but also of chili peppers.

One thing that cooled off our mouth was the rice and beans. It included spices like nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and allspice. The rice and beans was our favorite part of lunch, although the jerk beef was good, too.

The steamed veggies was mostly cabbage, with a few string beans, celery, broccoli and red peppers in there. The veggies were not too soft, and still had some body to them.

Unfortunately, the plantain was on the bready side, and was not the sweet plantain we expected for dessert.

They are still getting things together on social media. The website address on the truck takes you to a Go Daddy holding site, and we cannot find a Twitter or Facebook page for them either. Guess you'll just have to keep an eye open for the truck below.