Mapping halal food trucks.
Halal Food Street Carts in New York City.
halal food truck at Atlantic Ave/Barclays Center, Brooklyn, NY credit: Ateqah Khaki
I am interested in the halal food street cards that populate this city by day and night. This mapping project aims to ask questions around public space usage – how street life and political economies interact and where race, class, gender, ethnicity and nationality inform the politics of food. I am specifically drawn to the idea of authenticity and re-branding, and in diasporic ties to different homelands through food, incorporating taste, smell, and sight. I am interested in unpacking the collectivity of ‘halal food,’ examining it as an assemblage, and in exploring the identities of the vendors that work these trucks – where do they come from? What is their connection to halal food?
What is the connection between cuisine and culture? When people migrate, apart from their belongings and memories, they carry with them recipes handed down over generations, and memories of how food tasted in particular places. New places offer up new kinds of food, new inspiration, the development of new taste and the discovery of new ingredients. What is called ‘Halal Food’ in NYC, is not halal food in the countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, which is where most of these vendors can trace their origins. All food is halal in most of the Islamic world, and as the practice of halal meat is derived from religion, it is geographically contained along Islamic lines. All food is halal in those countries. The distinction seems unwarranted, and gratuitous. No meat is marked as ‘halal’ because all foodstuff would be ‘halal.’ The common interpretation of ‘halal’ is used to refer to a way of cutting the meat, to let the blood drain out completely, to invoke the name of God at the moment of slaughter. Other formalities include slitting at the throat, and that the animal must be conscious, and must have been fed a natural diet. However, halal food as popularized by the street food trucks, has now come to signify the meal itself served up in white containers. This shift in meaning and common usage, reflects association, and effective labeling.
How does cuisine alter and develop when it starts to sample from the new immediate and the new local? For instance, the white sauce, popularized by the halal food trucks, which appears to be a concoction of garlic, mayonnaise, yogurt and other items does not feature as part of a traditional meal of cooked rice with meat. It was developed to assuage and accommodate the palate of the New York City consumer.
In order to be able to operate a street food truck, potential vendors must apply for a food vendor license, alongside a permit for the food truck from the department of health. Before applying for the license, potential vendors must undertake a food handling training or a food protection certificate. Additionally, they must possess a New York State tax ID number, and social security.
The first halal food trucks starting appearing on the scene in 1992. ‘Halal Guys,’ which was one of the initial entrants on the scene, quickly became patronized by taxi drivers, in search of a quick, cheap, tasty meal and gained promotion through them. Over the years it became a tourist attraction, the Halal Food cart on 53rd and 6th avenue (Halal Guys) has built up a reputation as the ‘best’ halal food truck in the city.
While the food remains essentially the same, cooked yellow rice with meat, some lettuce and tomatoes, and a drizzling of white sauce and (spicy) red sauce, the food carts have found ways to differentiate. Rafiqis food carts will serve black beans, corn and peppers in addition to the meat and the rice. Halal Guys on 53rd distinguish their food by carrying yellow plastic bags instead of white. Some others cook vegetables into the rice. If the food is the same, how do these carts create business and decide who gets to park in which spot? Favoured locations include outside school buildings, close to offices (there is a high concentration in midtown Manhattan and downtown). There aren’t so many to be found in residential areas, where there is less visible commercial activity. However, questions of ‘turf’ and who claims which spot and how is it theirs are of deep interest to me and to this project.
It is not just the food that marks the halal food truck – it’s the scents wafting down half a block or more, of meat bring cooked or grilled in spices that draws you close to these trucks on a cold day, or the catchy music being played inside the truck (I want to incorporate sound as an important locative element in my map).
There is implicit movement involved in the street food business. There are day and night time shifts; there are parking locations (where do these trucks come from? And where are they housed?), and the homes of the vendors that go to pick them up before a shift and park them someplace at the end of their work day/night. Movement through the city is also segregated by time and class: the workers of urban infrastructure rise before anyone else does, to clean the streets, to start transportation shifts to provide for rush hour traffic, to transport fresh produce to markets, to deliver newspapers, to brew morning coffee and open cafés for breakfast, to deliver mail. Street food vendors are constantly vulnerable to tickets and to police-authorized evictions from the parking space (both temporary and permanent). Street economies have to be mobile, and resourceful and vigilant in order to be able to sustain their practice.
While halal food trucks are ubiquitous in the city, there is not nearly enough material out there which can be utilized to view the intersections of class and ethnicity, and immigration status and profession. The production and branding of ‘halal food’ is not new, but it remains understudied and underexplored as a phenomenon in New York City.
As a mapped network, I am curious about visuals like the density of halal trucks in any given area, and the regularity of presence in any given spot (are the trucks parked every day? Do they take days off?). I’m also interested in visualizing the clusters that may emerge, showing the most popular spots and analyzing what and why they remain favourites. I’m currently imagining this as a geographical map that will provide leading questions to develop into a relational map addressing the balance of power between the vendors the structures that they have to operate within, manifested by the police and various regulatory State departments.
Bibliography:
Naked City, Sharon Zukin
Sidewalk, Mitchell Duneier, Ovie Carter, New York: Farrar, Straus and Girouz, 1999
Gastropolis, Food and New York City, Annie Hauck-Lawson, Jonathan Deutsch, Columbia University Press, November 2008
Halal Street, New York, N.Y.
Janne Louise Anderson, Islamic Horizons, Jan/Fev 2013, Vol. 42. Issue 1
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rgm&AN=84564255&site=ehost-live
Halal Pizza: Food and Culture in a Busy World, Roberta James, Australian Journal of Anthropology. April 2004, Vol. 15 Issue 1
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=12619217&site=ehost-live
Lok Siu, ”Twenty-First Century Food Trucks: Mobility, Social Media, and Urban Hipness.” Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader, edited by Robert Ko, Martin Manalansan, and Anita Mannur. NYU Press.
Street vending guidelines:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/sbs/nycbiz/downloads/pdf/educational/sector_guides/street_vending.pdf
Press:
‘The Food Truck Business Sucks’ Adam Davidson, May 7th 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/the-food-truck-business-stinks.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
Halal food culture in New York – Suby Raman
http://subyraman.com/halal-food-culture-in-new-york-city/
Other resources:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/sidewalk-city.html
Lovely.
nice photo 🙂
also, i LOVE THIS PROJECT! when we hang out next week, remind me to tell you about the daily (seven times a week) commute of mahmood, the vendor whose photos i shared with you.