Allan Appel Photo
Roy’s “Stinky Bomb.”
No turkey carts were in sight in the run-up to Thanksgiving. The carnivores in the medical school food district had to make do with a mere pound to a pound-and-a-half of sausage, shredded steak, and pastrami, slathered with hand-shaved parmesan and a touch of soy sauce.
The Stinky Bomb — $5 for half a sub and $8.50 for a full — was one of the specials at Jon’s Lunch, the longtime pole-positioned food cart at Cedar and York Street. It kept selling and selling, along with everything else.
Roy looks on as Jim Cannon, a devotee for 8 years, shows off his steak and cheese.
That’s in part because Jon Roy, who established the cart 23 years ago after a stint as a bartender and waiter, has a devoted following. He’s memorized at least 15 or 20 regulars’ meat predilections and chats with nearly each customer not only about the day’s order, but the kids, the new job, the wife in the emergency room, the hassle to pick up the kids on time.
Call him a bartender still, but of food, and running his own business — well enough already to have put one of his three kids through college.
Because it’s a food cart and people don’t linger, it’s not exactly Cheers. Yet Roy, who has an easy, interested, but not intrusive manner, knows a lot of the customers from years of steak subs and of being out beneath his umbrella in all kinds of weather, short of serious wind or snow storms.
The night before each day’s work or early in the morning, he texts his meat orders to Ferraro’s on Grand Avenue and to Restaurant Depot in Orange. All the food, the large coolers it’s stored in, and the cart itself fit into a Toyota Tacoma truck. He’s at his spot and setting up his umbrella by 9:30 a.m.
“I could do it in my sleep,” he said.
He stays each day until 2:30.
In the 45 minutes this reporter hung out beneath the blue canopy that Roy put up for customers when the rain was still pouring, one customer dropped over from the hospital; he turned out to be Roy’s ex-father-in-law.
“How’s your wife?”
“She’s in the emergency room.”
“I thought she was getting better.”
“She was.”
“And you?” inquired Roy as he handed the man his sandwich.
“You gotta do what you gotta do.”
The next customer was Yale University police officer Mike Brown. He ordered a sub; then he and Roy exchanged a few words about the accountant they share.
The long-time officer disagreed with Roy about when he started the business. Brown said 1988. Roy said it was 1989. “No matter. I was standing right here. I was waiting for him,” Brown joked.
Roy’s diverse customers have in common that they either work in the medical district or are close enough to have a short walk, jog, or bike ride over. “Cops, firemen, doctors, students, Metro North, construction,” Roy said, as the aromas of slowly frying onions and splashes of Kikkoman teriyaki sauce drifted over the York and Cedar intersection like olfactory calling cards.
Goran Boeckel, a student doing research on pharmacology at the medical school, was a relatively new customer. He ordered the Stinky Bomb and said he wasn’t worried about the through-the-roof cholesterol and other such concerns.
“I work out every day and my metabolism’s good,” he said.
Roy said he has a regular cardiologist customer who orders a steak and cheese sub once a month. The other times, he goes for the soba noodles, with a smaller portion of the meat of your choice on top, along with salad.
Dr. Tom Hanson took a break from delivering babies to nab a steak and noodles. He liked Roy’s gloves. As to the food it “gives me energy and is ‘relatively healthy.’”
“Everything in moderation,” said Roy.
Roy has the number one position among the food carts, he said, because of his longevity, which about five or six years ago led city licensing authorities to meet with him due to an overcrowding of the carts on the street. Roy said the new guys look to him to pass along the city’s concerns about, say, clogging the street when unloading supplies, wearing sanitary gloves, and jockeying for position on the sidewalk.
As the paterfamilias of the carts, he worked out arrangements assigning — and reserving — spots for each of the 30 or so vendors.
“If I go away for six months,” Roy said, the spot is held for him, and no one can vend in his place.
Subs on the Honor System
The customers are so regular and for sanitary reasons — Roy wears plastic gloves, a box of which he goes through each day — Roy doesn’t even touch money. Instead he keeps a small glass of quarters by the Kikkoman on the front shelf of the cart, and a self-serve bucket of bills for change to his side. If customers get, say, a $7.50 sub, while Roy chats with them he’ll suggest they take two quarters from the glass and two bucks from the bucket on their own.
Roy said he was the first to keep an open cash register, and he’s never lost a dollar to an unscrupulous customer, although once or twice counterfeit bills have been slipped in.
As if on cue, a customer walked up and said, “You break a hundred?”
“Is it real?” said Roy.
“Of course.”
“It had better be.”
The order was a half sub with sausage and peppers.
Later in the week, a camera crew is filming a promotional piece about the university and the medical school. The scene is going to include three nurses, Roy said, and his cart.
Jon is the best! And he's got some tough competition on Cedar Street! Its good to know where to find an affordable, hearty lunch if you work downtown. Good piece.