Queens food ambassador Jeff Orlick leading a midnight street food tour.
Last week I went on a Midnight Food Crawl down Roosevelt Ave in Queens with local food ambassador Jeff Orlick. We hit a bunch of food carts, trucks, booths and even a couple semi-legal shopping cart vendors. This isn’t the Manhattan food cart scene, so we’re not talking about grilled cheese and Korean tacos and wood-fired pizza and funky ice cream – these are traditional dishes made by immigrant families just trying to make ends meet. Jeff translates the cuisine to people like me who need a nudge before going off my personal culinary map.
One stop we made was a new Dominican truck and one menu item really stuck out – PIZZATON. It starts with “pizza,” so how bad could it be? This wasn’t my top dish of the night but it ended up being one of the group’s favorites.
I’ll let Jeff explain:
“That pizzaton had a smashed green plantain shell, with tomato sauce, cheese (not sure what kind), shrimp [or] chicken, and I believe it had peppers in it too (don’t have a close enough photo). Plantains are something that’s sometimes used instead of bread, like on the patacon, which is basically a sandwich but with plantains instead of the bread (it’s the banana version of a chimichurri).”
The menu. Pizzaton is item 5-6.
It was pretty tasty, but more a bunch of stuff with cheese melted on top than anything. This truck claims to have invented the dish and I have a feeling they’re not making that up. Keep your eyes peeled for more PIZZATON at your local Dominican food purveyor.
And check out Jeff’s awesome food tours in Queens. I promise this is not a paid endorsement, I just really enjoyed the tour!
