Me and Mack are friends!
I'm Cody Reiss, and I'm your New York City host
for "5 Buck Lunch."
My love of food has taken me to more than 35 countries.
I've worked as a cook, farmer, and cheese maker.
Now I'm in NYC in search of the tastiest
and cheapest food my ducats can buy.
Join me as I take you to the dankest lunch spots
for five bucks or less.
Now, when I want something affordable, filling, and dank,
my mind goes to street food.
But, for a lot of people street food conjures images
of cold kebabs, sad slices, sweaty dogs,
and, to be honest, for a city as, like, culturally diverse,
the amount of options of street food
you have in New York is actually kinda limited.
The culture of street food in India,
or Chaat, is incredibly varied.
It's very intentionally sauced and it goes way beyond
the samosas and dosas that we all know very well.
Now today, I'm gonna try to find something
that I've never had before.
But first, I'm gonna talk to some
New Yorkers about street food.
What do they think?
What are they talking about?
We'll see.
I've got five bucks, bad luck,
and a crippling amount of personal debt. Let's go.
Ah, where are you from?
- France.
Ah, well bonne journée.
Have you gotten any street food in New York?
- Of course, Pretzel.
- Pretzels, yeah.
You get it with mustard?
- Yeah.
- Of course.
Where are you from?
- I'm from Melbourne.
- Street food in Melbourne; exists? Doesn't exist?
Super dank? Meat pies?
What's going on?
- Well, it's mostly just like,
outside of like, sporting events.
- What do you get?
Little dogs?
- You getting meat pies.
Like, you're getting, yeah.
- Someone say meat pies?
- OK, that's the last time I'll say meat pies.
Meat pies, meat pies, meat pies, meat pies.
Did someone say meat pies?
- I might have said meat pies, whoops.
So, obviously one of the classic street foods
in New York is a dirty baby water dog.
- See me, I'm not, I'm not preferable towards hot dogs
only because I know what they're made of, you know.
A lot of leftover food that's just mushed together
and just stuffed in those things, and--
- I know and you're eating pretty, pretty clean, I think.
- Notice that this is a vegan wrap.
Vegetarian wrap.
- Oh vegan wrap, dude.
Shout out.
- Chickpeas.
Yeah, man, we got all the good stuff in here, man.
- All the good stuff goes inside.
- Keep the good stuff hidden inside.
- You have to go through a lot of my trauma to get in there.
- Yeah, yeah.
- A hot dog, you get a hot dog here?
- Hot dog are very, very cool I think.
- Oh I think hot dogs are very cool, too!
Hot dogs rock.
- Very cool, I think.
- If you were a street food, what street food would you be?
- Probably like pad Thai.
- I'd be a good four-cheese grilled cheese, man.
- Yeah.
- You're crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside or what?
- It's how I gotta be, you know?
But man, chopped cheeses, man.
- So let's say you were pad Thai.
What would your like, life motto or slogan be?
- I'm really cheap.
Sounds like my mom.
Sorry, mom, I can't talk right now I'm filming this
stupid little sh-- uh, how's it going?
Hey, here I am at Pondicheri in the Flatiron District now,
wanna give a quick shout out to the bake lab.
That's what me and my college homies
used to call our stoney little dorm room.
Anyways, we're here to get street food, OK?
So let's head inside, come on.
I guess street food isn't usually inside, but here we go.
Hello.
- Hello.
- I am looking for some street food.
- OK, you came to the right place.
- Can you tell me, like, a little bit about Pondicheri for people
that haven't been here before?
- Yeah, so Pondicheri is run by me and my mother,
it's a women-owned business.
- I've had samosas here, they're fantastic.
- Yes.
- But I want to try something a little bit different.
Chaat, tell me about it.
- Well, we have so much chaat,
but we have something that has elements of that
that's even better.
It's called the Slumdog.
- The Slumdog?
- The idea came from the idea of
making a vegetarian hotdog.
- Sweet.
- That actually tastes good.
Bun comes from a traditional
Indian street food called pav bhaji.
Then we have a chickpea dog that came from Khandvi.
We dust that in chaat masala.
Then we have the three sauces.
We have cilantro as spicy, cumin yogurt as cooling,
and tamarind is sweet, then we have the pickles.
And it's so tasty.
- The only thing is, I only have five dollars.
- Yeah, you can get the Slumdog for five dollars a la carte.
- I would love to take that.
- All right, let's do it.
- You just said five bucks, is that right?
- Uh, sure?
I actually have a five here, here you are.
And I'll just take this little cup of flowers
and I think it's an even deal.
- Done.
Thank you very much.
Here it is.
I know what you guys are probably thinking,
"That guy said he was getting street food
and I'm pretty sure he might be inside.
I'm gonna tear him up in the comments --
ruin his whole life."
Well, I think the cool thing about this place is
they're serving up food that has the vibe of street food,
it's handheld, and it also has the same price point.
This guy's five bucks, and it's pretty freaking hefty.
This has all my favorite things.
Pickled stuff, sauces, textural variants
and, I guess I should take a little bite.
- There's a lot going on.
There's like a crunchiness from the chickpea stuff,
there's a crunchiness of the pickles.
The bun right here has a bunch of seeds and cumin.
Feels pretty squishy but also a little crunchy, which is dope
there's tons of different sauces, there's something that's
like refreshing, there's something that's sweet,
there's something that's spicy.
Anyhow, that's it for me.
I'll see you guys next week on "I Love the 90's."
Or wait, what's it called?
Oh, I'm sorry.
On "5 Buck Lunch."
If you thought this episode was chill,
watch more of our episodes, all right?
Make sure you subscribe, comment, like, share,
you know the deal.
For now, I'm on the floor.
And so are you.
See ya!