Our 10 Best Vegetarian Street Foods

Rebecca Marx

Mexicue's beet and goat cheese taco.

While street food is, to many people, still synonymous with street meat, there are plenty of vegetal pearls to be found among the literal swine. You just have to search a little harder, and we have, across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. What follows are the 10 best options we've found for street-side vegetarian dining; naturally, your own picks may vary, so tell us in the comments. Roughage and dairy and dosas, right this way ...

Rebecca Marx

Sami Dosa Cart's mysore masala dosa.

10. The Souvlaki Truck GR's Greek fries. You've got to hand it to Souvlaki GR: For a truck that makes absolutely no concessions to vegetarians, they certainly know how to appeal to their basest instincts. And that would be through the holy trinity of starch, fat, and salt. Strapping, skin-on spuds are buried under a thick drift of salty feta and served hot in a wax paper bag. Gloriously decadent and bearing absolutely no pretensions to health, they are both a meal and flexitarian peace accord. @souvlakitruck

9. Mexicue's beet and goat cheese taco. Although the taco fusion truck's real sympathies lie in pulled-pork sliders and chorizo-crammed tortillas, it also saves a little love for the vegs with its take on the age-old beet and goat cheese salad. Here, the beets are pickled, and their sweet tanginess plays well with the creamy, slightly funky cheese. The chile de arbol barbecue sauce adds some spice, and watercress a sharp, clarifying snap. @Mexicue

8. N.Y. Dosa's Special Pondicherry dosa. Amiable and impressively mustachioed, Thiru Kumar has been running his all-vegan dosa cart on the southern border of Washington Square Park for about a decade. As its name suggests, the Pondicherry dosa is indeed special, thanks to the sum of its few parts: a light, crackly crepe; fluffy, mildly spicy potatoes; and crunchy peppers and onions. The accompanying sambar and coconut chutney are solid, too. Washington Square Park South, 917-710-2092

7. Sami Dosa Cart's mysore masala dosa. Yes, another dosa cart. But frankly, where vegetarian street food is concerned, you can never have too many dosa carts. Sami, the cart's voluble and endlessly friendly proprietor, worked in a Queens restaurant for 14 years. Now he can usually be found on the southwest corner of Broadway and 39th, making some of the most ethereal crepes in Midtown. The mysore masala variety is shot through with chili paste and filled with fluffy, steaming-hot potatoes, and served with both sambar and coconut chutney. And as good as the dosa itself is, it's merely a delivery vehicle for those excellent condiments. In particular, you may find yourself asking for a second order of the chutney, equal parts sweet and incendiary, so you can drink it on its own. Broadway and West 39th Street, 347-965-3353

6. Endless Summer Tacos's seitan tacos. Yeah, the service can be flaky and the location unreliable. What do you want, it's run by rockers. But if there's one thing those mothertruckers understand, it's that seitan -- at least to a sizable percentage of Williamsburg's fauxhemian population -- is king. And so they treat it as such, generously piling it with sliced radishes, cilantro, and voluptuous ribbons of crema, and swaddling it all with a double layer of tortillas. All of which has made many a drunk vegetarian deliriously happy. Bedford Avenue and North 3rd Street, Brooklyn, 347-400-8128