Halal!!! Halal!!

A native of Bangladesh whose pristine toque reaches nearly to the ceiling of his cramped stall, Mr. Rahman quit the restaurant business in 2000 after he noticed a pushcart near the World Trade Center selling platters of halal food. Intrigued, he ordered a container of chicken and rice. A few greasy bites later, he had concluded that he could elevate the plebeian dish to unprecedented heights of refinement.

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Back then, the sight of a gourmet halal cart might have caused some passers-by to raise their eyebrows.

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“The hot dog now is for tourists,” said a rueful Chafik el-Mokhtar, office manager at 2M Friend Corporation, a hot-dog cart garage and supply store on West 47th Street near 11th Avenue. “The people usually go for chicken and rice because it’s good for hunger,” he added wistfully.

Mohamed Abouelenein, an Egyptian who used to sell hot dogs, said, “Hot dog is not a meal.” That’s one reason he switched to gyro and chicken in 1992, becoming, he claims, the first peddler in New York to sell halal meat from a cart.

“We figured out that most of the cabdrivers are Egyptian, Pakistani,” he said. “They suffered too much from no halal.”

I bet all New Yorkers are thrilled now they have halal food on every corner !!