About once a week:

Me: “No bag. No bag. No, no fork. No napkins. No. No I have it all back at the office. No, just this.”
Halal guy: *smiles and laughs*
Me: Thanks.

One thing I love about NYC lunch time operations is the insane efficiency of busy lunch joints — especially street vendors and deli cashiers (who often handle three customers at once because they make change faster than customers can pay). One thing that drives me nuts is the waste created. In order to refuse any part of the packaging — bag, utensils, sauce packets, napkins, etc. — requires an insane amount of persistence.

In a typical week, I think I only use only three or four varieties of container, which are almost always plastic or styrofoam. While I can minimize the accouterments, I still can’t ditch the container. I wish I could just walk up to the halal guy, hand him a plastic container, and walk away with my food. (Or my soup guy; or my hot bar food from the deli) — but I’m sure if I tried to pull this on my own, most vendors would either refuse or, at minimum, give me a hard time.

I think the City should sponsor a standardization of various takeout container types which vendors could sell along with their products and accept for various kinds of foods. A visit to one of the busy “has everything” Manhattan delis should be able to standardize on a handful of container types that’d be appropriate for most kinds of foods. The city should also accept these containers for recycling. Then, I could walk up to my halal guy, give him my number six, and walk away with my chicken-on-rice happily…

Takeout Conundrum musings at Serious Eats

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