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i grew up in bayside and there used to be a chow chow truck that parked on the street right by queensborough community college. if memory serves me correct the truck was a chinese mustard yellow with red lettering. my memory is intact about the taste and they were great. sometimes you'd burn the insides of your mouth because it was very, very hot. and the best part was the cup which was a big crispy noodle. the truck wasn't there all the time but when it was, they almost always won over my hard earned money which usually came from delivering newsdays. i know there are many other kinds of chinese cuisine to try and living out here in southern california there are some great places to eat at, but memories of the chow chow cup remain some of the best chinese food ever eaten. i'll bet if someone came out with the same recipe and drove around in a truck they'd make a very nice living. someone, please start it up and bring at least one of your trucks to pasadena.
I remember the Chow Chow Cup truck ! I first encountered it when I was in the vicinity of the Bronx high school of science in 1969. The guy that "owned" it was always smiling, and I was fascinated by the concept at the time. It was a cool idea, and eating the container when you were finished seemed brilliant to me. A few years later in 1973 I was enrolled at the nearby Lehman college, and lo and behold, there was the truck, and it had the SAME smiling guy running it. I guess he had the "territorial franchise"!!! I also remember talking to the guy about what a great idea it was. The eggroll was profoundly greasy, but you couldn't beat the cup! Cheap and tasty. I actually preferred it to the Lehman cafeteria, and would get a sinking feeling in the gut when it occasionally wasn't there. One day I was chomping away and noticed the guy wasn't smiling, and that was the last time it was there, never to return. Over the following years I forgot about it, and then years after that I was driving somewhere in Queens when I passed a long-since gone auto junkyard (remember them?) that had the mangled remains of 3 or 4 junked Chow Chow trucks piled up, and it all came back to me. What was really sad was the truck that I was familiar with was in the pile, and I experienced a heavy feeling of aftermath pathos..
It still had the faded remains of the "chinese" caricature on the side with that crazy motto..."The tasty treat in the cup you can eat"
I remember Chow Chow Cup from the Bronx. In the early sixties, there was a store near Jerome Avenue and 169th Street. In the seventies, there was a truck. The food was the GREATEST!!
In honor of the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock, the New York Times online has posted a lot of pictures taken by people who attended the festival. One of them shows a Chow Chow Cup truck!
From what I've been able to learn, one of the truck owners spent his summers in Monticello and cruised among the bungalow colonies doing business, just like in the city.
I remember the trucks when I was very little, but too small to eat their food.
My family had a bungalow in Rockaway (actually, Arverne, I think) in the early 1960's. I remember getting the Chow Chow Cup hot dogs in an egg roll wrapper. One summer when I was about 6, I fell off the boardwalk onto a broken bottle and needed several stitches in my knee. I would not walk, and my dad had to carry me everywhere. One day, Chow Chow Cup came, and I asked him to get me a hot dog. He said not, if I wanted one I had to walk to the truck and get it myself. I was really mad, and I did, step by painful step. Only after I got there did I turn around and notice he was 2 steps behind me the entire way.
I remember Chow Chow Cup cruising my neighborhood, ENY, Brooklyn. It had to be in the early60's, because I was in college in '66 and never new them to be in the neighborhood after that.Definitely one of my all time favorite after-school snacks. The chow mein started to soften the noodle cup after a while. I recently stopped into my neighborhood (Valley Stream)Chinese take-out and told the cook about my childhood treats. I said it would be a great idea to serve to the local HS kids at lunch. I explained that the eggroll skins could be molded into a cup shape, fried and served with chow mein and rice inside. He said kids today only go for sesame chicken, Gen. Tso's chicken , and spare ribs. Too bad. Those were the days. Would love a "cup" right now.
Last edited by jerryeny51; 04-18-2010 at 01:39 PM..
Reason: misspellings
The thing is in bayside ny ..the chow chow truck was run by a large italian guy who really new how to make chow mein should be creamy not watery or dry ..and now days the local..chinese take out places do not !!!!! They stink to be exact !! I havent had good spare ribbs in years i used to love the old manderian inn in china town ny nothing as good since they closed years ago glenn leslie
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"The tasty treat in the cup you can eat !!!
