NYC Food Truck Lunch: Cumin Lamb Dry Noodle From Traditional Chinese Cuisine

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With the list of finalists recently released for this year's Vendy Awards, we went back to our old stomping grounds of Greenwich Village to visit this week's food truck, who are one of the finalists for the 2016 Vendy Cup.

The Traditional Chinese Food truck parks on West 4th St, just east of Washington Square Park, right in the middle of NYU territory. We lived in this neighborhood for many years, but moved up to Harlem a couple of years ago.

The menu is extensive, with both authentic Chinese food and Americanized Chinese food (i.e. General Tso's chicken). Many of the patrons we saw were Chinese students from NYU, which was a good sign.

"Cumin lamb dry noodle" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it's made with real lamb, and costs only $7. At first, we weren't sure what "dry noodle" meant, but it just means that it's not a noodle soup dish, of which there were several choices as well.

Opening the container, lunch was very fragrant from the cumin. As we said, they don't use that questionable processed lamb product served at halal carts. The lamb was tender and flavorful enough to stand up to the cumin and chili peppers that were in the dish.

Besides the cumin and chili peppers, there were a lot of bean sprouts, some red onion, julienned cucumber and garlic.

Make no mistake, this was a spicy lunch. We enjoyed it heartily, but if you don't like spicy food, there are plenty of other dishes to choose from.

We like the wide noodles they used, which picked up more of the sauce than thinner noodles would have. However, the noodles were a little on the soft side. We prefer our noodles a little firmer.

Nevertheless, this was a hearty, filling, tasty lunch. Washington Square Park is not as convenient for us as it used to be, but if you're in Greenwich Village, definitely give Traditional Chinese Food a try.

They also had a few different types of meat on skewers that looked good, and we're definitely going to try the noodle soups when the weather gets cooler.