The gyro platter reigns as the world’s best street food. Since first being served from a New York City food cart more than 30 years ago, it’s become a staple in big cities around the country. In Michigan, where food carts are rare because we don’t do a lot of walking on the streets, one of the best options is in Troy’s many strip malls at NYC Halal Eats.
For the unfamiliar, the dish is effectively a deconstructed gyro served over rice and doused in a tangy “white sauce.” NYC Halal Eats calls it the Halal Platter and uses yellow basmati rice with heavy whiffs of cumin, clove, and cardamom to lay a fragrant foundation for the panoply of spices and notes in the meat, white sauce, and hot sauce that’s laid atop — perhaps some garlic, curry, turmeric, onion, chili powder, vinegar, lemon, and much more.
Knobs of deeply flavorful, tender lamb gyro meat or small hunks of grilled chicken turned orange from its marinade in sazon, along with caramelized onions, comprise the next layer. That’s topped with a thick coating of the white sauce.
That white sauce is what the dish is really all about. It’s not tzatziki — and most gyro platter makers guard their recipe pretty closely, so there’s a bit of speculation as to what’s in it — but it’s tangy and creamy, and owner Sal Salem would only say that his version is like a lighter buttermilk ranch.
The final coat is hot sauce, and Halal Eats’ is a thin, vinegary variety with a pepper kick, though it’s optional. Some restaurants also blanket the mix in iceberg lettuce for some good crunch, but Halal Eats puts on the side a tabbouleh tossed with iceberg lettuce. Mix it in as you see fit. The platter also comes with crunchy, pre-seasoned fries.
These days the platter is commonly known in NYC as some variation of “chicken over rice with white sauce,” or a “gyro platter” — just try to walk a few blocks without encountering a cart in Manhattan.
The general consensus is that the platter originated in 1990 with one of a number of carts run by Pakistiani or Egyptian immigrants, each of whom lay claim to assembling the first one to meet Muslim cab drivers’ lunch and dinner needs. The Halal Guys, a New York City food cart-turned-brick-and-mortar-restaurant-chain that opened its first Michigan location in Dearborn several years ago, took the concept national, while several mom and pop Hamtramck shops serve the dish locally.
Halal Eats also offers the platter in regular gyro form sans the basmati rice and with the salad wrapped in the pita, which eliminates some of the clove and cardamom effect, but the wrap concentrates each bite and the salad adds a cooling contrast.
The menu’s remainder is a long list of fried, condiment-heavy plates. Among the best we tried were the Salito Fries, which are a meal in and of themselves and a condiment blast with its generous application of white, chipotle, and cheese sauces washed over the crispy, hand-battered fried chicken, taters, and melted mozzarella.
The spicy chicken sandwich sits in a buttermilk-dill marinade before it’s fried and soaked with the vinegary, slightly fiery hot sauce, then given a ranch bath and served on a brioche with pickles and iceberg lettuce.
The NYC Halal Eats Loaded Philly is a massive Philly cheesesteak hoagie on a big crusty toasted sesame bun with a ton of ribeye, peppers, onions, fried chicken, mozzarella sticks, french fries, cheddar cheese, and mozzarella cheese — a package that is “the size of half of my face,” a co-diner noted, though she also opined that it made it too difficult to get a bite with all the flavors. It’s good, but absurd in size and a bit of a heartstopper. If that’s your thing, then go to town. Salem’s family owns a bakery that provides bread to thousands of food carts across New York, as well as five gyro platter shops in Queens under a different name.
Halal Eats is carryout only, and though it’s got a fast-casual feel, most food is prepared to order, which Salem says is because they want to keep everything “piping hot.” The chicken is halal, grass-fed, non-GMO, and hand-slaughtered, and everything is brought in or made fresh. He adds that Halal Eats is preparing to franchise, so even if Troy isn’t in the neighborhood, one could soon crop up near you.
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