Gourmet Desserts, On the Go

By: Claire Schmidt

Good Humor employee dressed in the classic white uniform.

There is nothing quite like the sweet, refreshing taste of ice cream after spending the day in New York City’s hot summer sun, especially when the process of getting that perfect, frozen treat is the ultimate experience.  With ice cream trucks lining almost every street, satisfying one’s sweet tooth is not a difficult task. However, ice cream trucks are not at all what they use to be. Offering a more innovative, higher quality product, these new “gourmet” trucks have come a long way from selling ice cream bars on a stick. Wrapped in flamboyant colors, from pale yellow to bright blue, gourmet dessert trucks are popping up across the entire city, and they are absolutely impossible to miss.

With the popularity of gourmet food trucks increasing, the owners of 32 trucks have come together to form the New York City Food Truck Association (NYCFTA). They have also hired the lobbyist Capalino and Company in order to advocate on their behalf and push for fair licensing practices as the industry continues to expand. “It’s good for all the trucks to ban together,” says Laura O’Neill, co-owner of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream and a member of the association. “So if there are issues, we can deal with them as a group.” The bureaucracy of street vending is not always easy to maneuver, and while the journey to become established has not been without challenges, gourmet food trucks are thriving. As vendors continue to improve their product and hold themselves to stricter standards, people are starting to take notice of the increasing trend, and their perception of what street food once was is slowly starting to change for the better.

One of around 250 Mister Softee trucks currently operating in New York.

Although the gourmet food trucks in New York City are not just limited to ice cream—the types of cuisine stretch to all corners of the world from Korean barbeque to Turkish tacos—there is something both nostalgic and iconic about ice cream trucks. As one of the first really successful food truck businesses, they have become a template for all the others.  “The ice cream man is something of an American icon,” says David Belanich of Joyride, a truck that pairs frozen yogurt with Stumptown coffee. “The ice cream truck is not only a New York street food phenomenon, it’s a national phenomenon.”

The history of the ice cream truck dates back to the 1920’s when Harry Burt of Youngstown, Ohio created the Good Humor bar, a chocolate coated ice cream dessert on a stick. To market his product, Burt sent out 12 chauffeur-driven trucks, complete with bells, and men dressed in white suits to promote the company’s wholesome image. The idea was a success and just thirty years later in 1956 brothers William and James Conway had a similar plan, to create Mister Softee. With over 700 trucks currently in the system, Mister Softee is now one of the most recognizable ice cream truck franchises in the country.

The Joyride frozen yogurt and coffee truck provides customers with joy in every cup.

A lot has changed since the first Mister Softee truck was rolled out over 50 years ago; the business of selling ice cream from a truck was a lot less complicated. “There was no such thing as vending licenses and health departments or any of that kind of stuff,” says Jim Conway, the current owner of the Mister Softee franchise. “They could just go out and do their own thing,” he adds of his father James Conway and his uncle Bill.

Today the requirements for obtaining a mobile food vending license are extensive and the process is often tedious. To sell food on the street a vendor must acquire both a food vendor license and a permit from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In order to pass the department’s health inspection and secure a permit, there are many standards that a food truck must meet. According to the City of New York’s permit inspection requirements, processing trucks, like the gourmet ice cream trucks, must have stainless steel interior surfaces, a two compartment sink with a swing faucet, a 40-gallon portable water supply tank, a 46-gallon permanent waste tank, and a sufficient ventilation system, in addition to following other sanitation methods.

There is no limit on the amount of available operator licenses, but there are only 2,800 citywide food permits that may be issued. With the lengthy waitlist it can take years for new vendors to receive a permit, if at all. Some vendors who need a permit, but are unwilling to wait, turn to the black market to obtain this documentation illegally and for a price. “There are no permits for trucks out there,” says Bryan Petroff, co-owner of The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, who rents a truck from a depot in order to avoid the bureaucracy and the cost of the permit distribution. “It’s a lottery system, so if you want one you are searching on the black market,” adds Petroff, who needs only a vendor’s license to run his seasonal business.

Even with a license and a permit in hand, the government does not make it easy for people hoping to make a living in the food truck business, especially when it comes to hiring employees. “The city is basically as unhelpful as possible,” says Joyride’s Belanich. Each employee must secure a tax I.D., a process that can take two or three months. “It’s the test of how serious someone is if they are willing to go through that,” says Natasha Case, CEO of Coolhaus Ice Cream Sandwiches. In addition, all vendors are forced to take a two-day long food protection course through the Department of Health.

The Van Leeuwen ice cream truck called "the turtle" sells refreshing treats at Central Park's Tavern on the Green.

Despite the adversity, there is a lot of innovation taking place in the world of gourmet food trucks. In particular, New York City ice cream trucks are finding unique ways to dress up a simple dessert. “I think street food is getting fancier. It’s not just hot dogs anymore. Waffles, gelato, burritos, fancy ice cream, cupcakes, you name it, New York’s got it,” says Malarie Gokey, a Coolhaus supporter whose favorite sandwich is the combination of a snicker doodle cookie and dirty mint chip ice cream. Vendors are constantly morphing their product to be more original and visually appealing than before. “Our most popular dessert is the cone called the salty pimp. It’s vanilla ice cream, dulce de leche, sea salt, and it’s all dipped into the chocolate,” says Petroff of Big Gay. “We love continuously experimenting. We like it to be fun, and we like to bring people back either for their favorites or something unique each time they show up,” he adds.

As a result, people are beginning to see street food in a more positive light. “As the quality of the food rises, so do people’s expectations,” states Perry Resnick, of Newyorkstreetfood.com. What were once termed “roach coaches” are now called “gourmet.”

The charm of these gourmet dessert trucks rests in their changeability, as well as in their mobility. “There’s definitely a big appeal of moving around and having the flexibility of being able to go to different events,” says Ross Resnick (no relation to Perry), the founder of Roaminghunger.com, a website that tracks gourmet food trucks in many major cities. “It keeps it really fresh and it keeps people really interested,” adds Resnick.

Social media has played a big part in the evolution of these gourmet food trucks. Twitter and other specialized mapping applications have made it possible to know where the  food trucks are at every moment. “It’s essential to the business,” Ross Resnick says of these networks. “It’s a cornerstone of the whole movement because if you don’t know up to a second whats going on, you might miss the truck.” For the trucks in New York City that have a set schedule, social media can still be useful, even if only to get the word out about the business. The idea of social media is to get people talking about them, how they look, how they differentiate” says Dan Iehl, of Gourmetfoodtrk.com and Savethefoodtrucks.com.

However, the question remains whether or not there is a sustainability in the industry of gourmet food trucks, or if it is simply a fad, like Livestrong wristbands and razor scooters. “I think like everything it will have its hugest moment, which was last year and this year,” states Petroff.  “I don’t think it can sustain that type of popularity, but it’s definitely built a foundation to keep these around for sure.”

Evaluating Cuomo’s Education Cuts to New York City

By Caterina Andreano

In the highest taxed state in the country, reducing the budget deficit for the first time in 17 years by $10 billion without raising taxes might seem like a victory. Yet many New Yorkers are strongly opposed to Governor Cuomo’s budget, which was approved in late March. The budget cuts state education spending by $1.3 billion, leaving New York City with an allotted education budget of $6.1 billion for the upcoming fiscal year — an overall cut of $840 million. The cuts are expected to severely affect the New York City public school system through teacher layoffs, an increased student-to-teacher ratio, and decreased funding for specialized and after-school programs.

Mayor Bloomberg estimates that he will be forced to lay off 6,000 public school teachers over the next year, worrying many about what real-time impacts these layoffs will have. “I have seen New York City lose some of the best teachers in the past,” says Sheri Meyers, Assistant Principal at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens. “First and second year teachers bring enthusiasm and warmth to their classrooms, which no training can give anyone. Their positions may be eliminated and they will not be teaching,” Meyers says about the expected layoffs.

Marina Marcou-O’Malley, a policy analyst at the Alliance for Quality Education, an organization that fights for high-quality public education in New York, agrees. “All across the state, school districts have been struggling to find ways to mitigate the impact of these cuts. However, teachers are being laid off or not replaced after they retire,” she says. “It hardly seems fair to balance the budget on our children’s backs and be jeopardizing the quality of their education.

The budget cuts are also expected to cause an increase in the student-to-teacher ratio in New York, which is already a problem for the public school system. The Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded agency that provides free information about New York City’s budget, found that about half of all New York City’s high school students attended overcrowded schools between 2008 and 2009. Though high schools are the most overcrowded part of the public school system, the budget cuts are projected to cause further overcrowding throughout the entire school system.

“In terms of impact right now we are looking at a 1.5 pupil increase per classroom,” says Michael Tragale, the Deputy Chief Financial Officer in the Division of Finance at the New York City Department of Education. “Schools have already suffered over the past few years as a result of multiyear reductions, that’s why this budget will be so painful. Last year we used collective bargaining reserves but they aren’t there anymore,” he says.

Afterschool and specialized programs in public schools are also expected to take a hit. “Schools are having to make cuts in programs that principals view as not important,” says Meryle Weinstein, Assistant Director at the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University. “Some principals are cutting or reducing their arts, music programs, technology programs, others are cutting their afterschool programs,” she says.

Many others share Weinstein’s prediction. Assistant Principal Meyers, Policy Analyst Marcou-O’Malley, and Deputy Chief Financial Officer Michael Tragale believe that programs such as these will be the first to go. The money allotted for the year will instead go to basic education first, often leaving meager funding for these programs. If these programs are to be kept, parents and teachers will need to raise funds themselves, which isn’t always possible, especially in low-income areas.

“Local school fund raising and wide spread partnerships between schools and non-profits will ameliorate some of the underfunding,” says Judy Baum from Insideschools.org, a non-profit website offering information about New York City’s public school system. “The bad news is that poorer school districts are less able to raise the money,” Baum says.

These low-income areas across the city are also likely to suffer in more ways than the inability to raise money to reinstate afterschool programs. “The reduction in aid is presented by the Governor as being structured to take the least from those who need the aid most. On a percentage reduction basis this is true. On a dollar reduction basis it is not,” says Rick Longhurst, the Executive Administrator for the New York State Parent Teacher Association. “A low wealth or high need school district would need to raise local property, or in the case of the city, income and property taxes, more to offset the reduction in State support than a more affluent or lower need district,” he says.

Students protesting the education cuts in Albany. Photo Credit: Alliance for Quality Education

This means that regardless of Governor Cuomo eliminating the deficit in the budget without raising taxes, low-income areas throughout the city will need to raise local taxes to make up for the large budget cuts to education.

Low-income areas also receive aid from various non-profit and pro-education organizations throughout the city and count on these organizations to help fund afterschool programs for the students. Assistant Director Weinstein believes that recent budget shortages and cuts in social service fields will hamper organizations’ abilities to alleviate problems that the cuts will cause in these low-income areas.

Some believe that the education cuts will actually work to deny students their  right to a proper education. The Campaign for Fiscal Equality, a non-profit organization working to reform New York State’s school finance system to ensure equal education, successfully won a lawsuit against the state in 2006, arguing that New York City schools were underfunded. The $5.5 billion that the lawsuit won for the city was supposed to be phased into the budget over four years, but has been stalled due to the recession. The stalled funding and budget cuts have made Michael Rebell, the co-counsel for the CFE in the lawsuit, speak out against the budget. Rebell recently wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Daily News, arguing that Cuomo’s recent budget cuts to education would violate the state constitution by making the public school system unable to provide children with the basic education they are constitutionally guaranteed.

“We should have received over a billion dollars more with the lawsuit from The Campaign for Fiscal Equality,” says Deputy Chief Financial Officer Michael Tragale. “We would have been looking at close to $8 billion with money from The Campaign for Fiscal Equality as opposed to the $6.1 billion that we received. We should have received our full share of funding,” he says.

Governor Cuomo, though, is defending the budget, and believes that the education cuts won’t actually hurt students if the schools allocate the money properly. Cuomo is accusing teachers unions, school districts and advocacy groups, of using children as “pawns” to cover-up the fact that they want to oppose the cuts politically.

“The average reduction to a school district is 2.7%. They say well we’re going to lay off teachers and we’re going to hurt children. If you cut the education budget, you’re going to hurt children, that’s their premise. No, I’m saying find a 2.7% efficiency in the education budget,” Cuomo said in a speech to schools in late March. “Manage the school system. Reduce the waste, reduce the fraud, reduce the abuse,” he said. “This is not about a teacher in a classroom. This is about less bureaucracy, less administrative overhead, less superintendent salaries…this is about recognizing the new economic reality that government is responsible for management just like everyone else.”

But Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, founding member of Parents Across America, and editor of the NYC Public School Parents blog – all organizations that call for education reform – believes that school budgets have no more room to cut. “Our school budgets are already cut to the bone. These cuts, unless the city steps in, will be devastating to kids,” she says.

Assistant Director Weinstein also believes it may be difficult to cut from the school budget anymore without affecting students. “The current round of cuts are just going to exacerbate the cuts that have already happened in the past,” she says. “I think community groups and parents are going to protest and they should.”

Discovering Dim Sum in New York City’s Chinatown

By: Claire Schmidt

Jin dui, a typical dim sum pastry that is made from rice flour and lotus seed paste, and is coated with sesame seeds.

It is 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning and the smell of shrimp and soy sauce permeates through the air. Almost each table is filled at Vegetarian Dim Sum House on Pell Street in New York City’s Chinatown, yet the room is relatively quiet. The atmosphere is unlike that of a traditional dim sum restaurant. Groups of two of three sit around square tables and use their pencils to check off dim sum specialties on a small white slip of paper, a practice that has shifted from the original cart-pushing method of twenty years ago. Young, Chinese waitresses collect the slips and within minutes are back again with stacks of steaming bamboo baskets filled with vegetable dumplings and steamed rice noodles. After about 50 minutes, with full bellies and paid checks, people begin to clear out for the next customers

While not all dim sum experiences are exactly like this one, more and more dim sum restaurants in Chinatown are modernizing their methods in order to cut back on waste and serve a better quality product. With over 10,000 people added to the region since 2000, many restaurants are trying to adjust to the trendy, young newcomers, with a primary age range of 25 to 29 years old according to the American Community Survey. They are trying to find a balance between the authentic Chinese dim sum experience and new, more innovative approaches. While the changes, such as ordering from a menu rather than the traditional cart, have helped to preserve the freshness of the food, something has been lost among the constant push for efficiency. The practice still remains very much a social destination for large families and friends, but the performance aspect of dim sum and the anticipation of visually glimpsing the food items before ordering them are no longer as common as they once were.

“When I was a child the waitresses would come by carrying the baskets with a strap around their necks. That was really old style china,” said Grace Young, the New York City based author of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. “As they came around they would also say the dish, but they would say it in a very “singsongy” way. It was this sell-job to draw attention to the dumpling that you are carrying. Part of the whole excitement when I was a child was the anticipation of what’s coming. Now there is no anticipation. You just look at a menu and check off what you want.”

The term dim sum (Cantonese) or dian xin (Mandarin) means “a little bit of heart” and is associated with small Chinese dishes, served in circular steamer baskets. These small meals are made to touch the heart with their delicate beauty and subtle flavors. Dim sum is usually linked to an even older tradition called “yum cha” or drinking tea. The practice developed from a custom that would take place along the ancient silk road in China hundreds of years ago, when fatigued farmers and travelers would stop to rest at a roadside teahouses. At first it was considered inappropriate to pair tea with food, as it was thought to lead to excessive weight gain. However, it was later determined that tea can actually aid in the digestive process. As a result teahouse owners began to sell many small snacks.

Dim sum dishes include various types of dumplings, steamed buns, and rice noodle rolls. For dessert there are often egg tarts, mango pudding, and jin deui, chewy, sesame seed covered dough balls. Traditionally the dishes are stacked atop metal carts and are pushed around by elderly Chinese waitresses. The servers circle the dining room multiple times before going back into the kitchen to refill their supply.  They stop at certain tables to offer their items to those customers that catch their eye. Then after a dish is placed on the table, the waitress will mark off a white tally sheet, signifying the size and price of what was ordered so that the payment process is effortless.

Dim sum was primarily morning meal, sometimes offered as early as 6:30A.M. and traditionally was not eaten after two o’clock. Now many restaurants in Chinatown are offering it all day long. “Dim sum has gone a far way since it originated from the silk road in China,” said Wilson Tang of the Nom Wah Tea Parlor on Doyers Street, a dim sum restaurant that has been around for 90 years
 “There are so many more items that are served now, and the term is used more loosely as dim sum can be served any time of day.”

While the restaurants are staying open longer, the amount of time that customers are spending at these restaurants is actually diminishing. “The most dramatic change is that it has become fast food. You come and are done within 45 minutes,” said Young, who remembers going to dim sum almost every Saturday as a child and spending from two to four hours drinking tea and relaxing with uncles, aunts, and cousins, as well as her immediate family.

Another change in many of Chinatown’s dim sum restaurants is the method that the food is being served. Many places are now in favor of the made-to-order menu technique versus the traditional cart pushing method that was common twenty years ago.

“Nowadays in Chinatown most places don’t have the food on carts,” noted Young. “They don’t use the carts because if the food doesn’t get taken, then it goes in circles and circles. Then when people look at the food and it looks slightly dead, they don’t order it. Restaurants realize they are wasting ingredients; they cook food that’s going to have to be tossed.”

However, if the restaurant is popular then the matter of dead food will never be a problem. “If it’s a really good dim sum restaurant there is not an issue of freshness because the waitress comes out and everything is taken,” added Young.

Many restaurants, like Jing Fong on Elizabeth Street, still offer dim sum from the carts, and those that preserve this piece of Chinese culture create an experience unlike any other. “It’s a beautiful system ’cause it’s loud and festive. There’s a communal spirit to it all,” said Christopher Namba, a 20-year-old patron of Jing Fong. “Being Chinese, it’s something that I grew up loving, and so now I try to take my friends to let them see a part of my own cultural history that I’m really proud of.”

Many dim sum restaurants in Chinatown are also experimenting with new flavors and varieties. “It’s a really easy kind of food for a chef to just get inventive, to do something that’s kind of what people know, but you change a filling a little bit or you put something in a kind of a wrapper so you have something that’s not brand new, but it has a little twist on it,” said Ellen Blonder, author of Dim Sum: The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch, who also noted that as dim sum chefs travel more often they begin to incorporate outside flavors into their cooking. “I like to call dim sum the original tasting menu,” said Blonder. “You don’t really have time to get bored with the food.”

As the customer base becomes largely American, many restaurants are also making the tradition of dim sum more approachable to the inexperienced. “I notice more menus with descriptions and pictures,” adds Tang. “As more and more 
Americans come to eat, they have more questions that Asian waiters can’t always answer because of the language barrier.”

Dim sum has always been a very family oriented gathering, and while it still remains a very social event, the level of interaction has decreased from what it once was. “In my family we once squeezed 14 people around the table because it was more fun to eat with all the people crowded around than have two tables,” said Blonder.

On this Saturday morning, it is clear that the social element of dim sum has been transformed for a younger, more technologically savvy generation.  At one table in particular three young Asian girls guzzle cans of Coca-Cola from clear straws and take pictures of each other with their iPhone cameras. At another table a Caucasian woman stares deeply at her cell phone, her fingers moving at a rapid speed on each key while her dad sits across the table with silent contentment.

People have become less interested in familial interactions. “Now the focus is not so much on the conversation and eating. Now it is people in their own orbits, kids on their phones and not interacting,” stated Young. “That’s a really weird thing to see when I go into a dim sum restaurant. To see that traditional, social element is gone. It’s really sad.”

Closing Columbus

By Caterina Andreano

March 22, 2011

Walking through Christopher Columbus High School on a weekend is a quiet experience. Few cars pass by and few pedestrians roam the streets, yet you can see evidence of the hustle and bustle that the school sees throughout the week – a crumpled worksheet that missed its way to the garbage, a broken pencil forgotten on the ground, and the trampled paths of grass that see hundreds of feet every day. Yet this high school’s bright hallways are set to close very soon. Christopher Columbus High School has been voted on by New York City’s Department of Education to be closed due to its declining graduation rate. The school is one of dozens that has been axed by the DOE over the past year.

The teachers of the high school are infuriated. They recognize that the reason for the decision is partly the poor four-year graduation rate of the school, which was less than 40% last year, but they believe the grading system is faulty. “The system used for grading is flawed and does not take into consideration the high need population that we serve. Our school serves a disproportionate share of the city’s most vulnerable students who need intensive services. Students who obviously take longer to graduate,” said ***, a *** teacher from the school.

***, a *** instructor at the school, agrees. “The school services homeless kids, students who have been incarcerated, English-as-a-second language kids and special needs kids. We take kids who no other school wanted. We can’t pick and choose our students so we become bottom feeders,” he said.

Mayor Bloomberg and New York City Schools Chancellor, Cathleen Black, who were unavailable for contact, won control of the mayoral-control law last year, which gave Bloomberg the power to hire the Chancellor, and gives them both the power to reorganize, and petition to have the DOE vote on schools to be shut down.  Many of the teachers, including Mr. Soto, disagree with Bloomberg’s campaign to close down failing schools and believe that the real reason behind the closures is Bloomberg’s attempt to privatize the property of the failed public schools.

“His entire campaign is based on half-truths, outright lies, and an agenda that has more to do with privatization and real estate than it does with educating students,” said ***, an *** teacher at the high school. “Bloomberg has won another prize, prime real estate in which to place another one of his pet schools, which by the way, will not accept the same types of special education, ESL, low-level students that we take,” she said.

As upset as they are with the final decision to close the school, the teachers are more upset at the fact that the school’s failures, the very reasons they are being shut down, are being blamed on them. “I am bitter, but rest assured, that bitterness has far more to do with Bloomberg and his minions than with anything that goes on in the classroom. The many students who become pregnant, father children and disappear for months, or who are taken to the Dominican Republic to visit relatives for five or six weeks, their absences or failing grades are considered the school’s failures,” she said.

Community organizations, like the New York Communities for Change, are also upset with the city’s campaigns to shut down schools. “Neighborhood schools are community institutions.  Closing them down solves nothing and just means surrounding high schools will become even more overcrowded,” said Staff Director Greg Basta from the NYCC. “We fail to see how closing neighborhoods schools and replacing them with smaller schools helps the community,” he said.

The 1,400 students that now attend the high school will be placed in other schools in the surrounding areas while new schools are being created in the place of Christopher Columbus High. Whether or not these new schools will actually accommodate them is an issue that’s still unclear.

“I think that Bloomberg is hoping that these students will disappear,” said ***. “If they don’t, he will probably scrape them off the bottom of his shoe and put them into credit recovery or I-schools, which is, at most, a second-class education.”