Where the Club Crowd Eats at 4 A.M. on the Weekend

Justin Maxon/The New York Times - A scene in front of a halal food cart on the corner of 53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas.

(Justin Maxon/The New York Times -- A scene in front of a halal food cart on the corner of 53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas.)

By MAGGIE FAZELI FARD
The New York Times

They make their approach from the south – a steady stream of yellow taxicabs, black town cars and vehicles distinguished only by their New Jersey license plates, weaving their way past the lights of Times Square and into the relative dark of an emptier Midtown. Their destination is a floodlit corner of Avenue of the Americas, where a line of glittering short skirts and dark designer jeans trails down 53rd Street under a fog of smoke. It’s 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and if their parties are no longer quite in full swing, they are at least ending on a satisfying note.

“Chicken on rice, lotta hot, lotta white,” people call out in succession, almost yelling over the sizzle of oily chunks of meat on the grill, holding out their fingers to indicate how many platters they want. The instructions are for chicken piled onto rice, then doused with hot sauce and a mysterious white sauce.

It was called “crack sauce” by Shirley Wong, 22, from Boston, who was visiting the food cart for the first time, on the advice of friends who told of the platter’s famous qualities. The phrase has been chanted here for the better part of two decades, and it doesn’t vary much — chiefly by those who want to add a little lamb and those who can’t handle a “lotta hot.”

The late-night food cart at 53rd and Sixth was started by Mohamed Abouelenein in 1992, but not with any intention of reinventing the after-party in New York City. He just wanted to serve his usual customers better: taxicab and limousine drivers who worked late through the night and were tired of hot dogs.

“They asked for big meals,” Mr. Abouelenein, 55, said. His regular customers, many of whom are from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, also asked for food prepared in accordance with Koranic law. “They were looking for halal food. That was the main idea.”

And so Mr. Abouelenein, an Egyptian, scrapped his own hot dog stand and began serving falafel, kufta kebab and chicken with rice. His customers, satisfied, began to bring their own customers with them.

Darius Amos remembers the time, in the fall of 2000, when he and his friends were starving after a night “out clubbing.” They discussed getting pizza, hot dogs, even a refrigerated burrito from a nearby bodega. One of his friends said he had heard of a vendor in Midtown who served “really good food” at that hour, but he didn’t know what kind, or where the vendor was. They hailed a cab anyway and said, “Take us where the good food is,” recalled Mr. Amos, 31. The good food, as far as their driver was concerned, was at 53rd and Sixth.

Mr. Abouelenein believes his was the first food cart to offer halal food, but an unofficial visual survey shows that clearly he was not the last. There are daytime halal carts now outside office buildings and nighttime vendors close to nightclubs, theaters and hotels.

Some of those drawing crowds these days are at 28th and Madison Avenue, 40th and Seventh Avenue, 45th and Sixth Avenue and 52nd between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. There are carts on Wall Street and in Washington Heights, and since all these kitchens are on wheels, if one locale doesn’t work, it’s easy to move.

Today, Mr. Amos swears by a cart at 52nd and Sixth (officially known as Shendy’s, with a devoted following in line and online through Web sites like www.yelp.com). It’s a block away from Mr. Abouelenein’s cart, and in between them is a peddler selling beverages like soda and water, presumably trying to get in on the late-night vending.

“I’ve tried both carts; 53rd is really the touristy spot,” Mr. Amos said. “52nd is the spot for the people who just couldn’t wait, the starving guy. I’m usually starving.”

Mr. Amos still travels an hour from Nanuet, N.Y., to Midtown and pays $8 to cross the George Washington Bridge and then orders a “mix, white, heavy hot” (chicken and lamb, extra spicy), but he swears the food is equally good at 52nd and 53rd Streets. But there’s no denying that Mr. Abouelenein’s cart has a cult-like following.

“We’re having some chicken and rice,” said Nestor Melendez, the assistant dean of students at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., rubbing his palms together excitedly. He and one of his co-workers began their evening at Hiro, followed by Cain nightclub. “At the end of a good night, you want a good meal,” Mr. Melendez, 35, said. “Here, you get a bang for your buck. Our students come here all the time.”

Wilther Merchan, 23, agreed: “When you find some really good quality food in these hours, it’s a no-brainer. You don’t find this in Hoboken.” Mr. Merchan said he made the trip from Jersey City into the city “every opportunity I get.”

Others, like Ms. Wong and her friend, Joty Kaura, 22, also from Boston, travel even farther. “If you come to New York, you have to get the chicken and rice,” Ms. Kaura said. It was her third time eating at 53rd and Sixth; she was introducing Ms. Wong to the pleasures of the platter.

The line of longtime fans and newcomers starts early and swells late, creating waiting times of up to an hour and keeping Mr. Aboulenein’s workers, in matching yellow T-shirts, out on the corner well into the morning. Business hours are only suggested at 53rd and Sixth.

“The food’s good,” said Hanny Hillal, 28, who makes a weekly trek with his friends from Monroe, N.J., and spends more on tolls than on the $6 platter. “But it’s more than just the food itself.” He paused to think. “You get to see hot girls.”

Mr. Hillal gestured around him with a sauce-stained fork. It was 4:30 a.m. on Sunday. There were still 50 or so people in line at 53rd Street, about half as many at 52nd Street, and more than 100 people sitting on benches, against fountains, in double-parked cars and on the ground along this stretch of Avenue of the Americas, which for a few hours each Friday and Saturday night turns into a makeshift dining room with a fashion catwalk.

A young woman in a short, tight, strapless black dress and high heels nearly walked into one of Mr. Hillal’s friends as she hobbled across the plaza. “We come here just for this,” he said.

Sean Basinski, the founder and director of the Street Vendor Project, an advocacy group, characterized the 53rd and Sixth phenomenon as an extension of the club scene that feeds it, profiting from the same method that the city’s hottest nightspots use.

“People come by, see the line and say, ‘There must be something good here,’ ” Mr. Basinski said. The business was started with one type of client in mind — cab and limo drivers — and “now there are all these club kids from New Jersey,” he said with a laugh. “And they wait. God bless them for waiting.”

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