Try to move in on a city food vendor’s turf and there’ll be halal to pay.
Newcomers to the city’s food-cart wars say that when they stake a claim to a busy corner, they frequently get threatened by a loose-knit band of gyro-cooking thugs they call the “Halal Mafia.”
“They had their friends park a truck in my location because they were trying to push me out,” said Clive Dennis, who manages the Little Ochi Hot Spot, a Jamaican cart on Park Row downtown.
“It’s like a mob thing — these halal guys think they’re the only ones who should be selling food on the street.”
When the threats don’t work, the veteran vendors start dialing 311 and making health-code-violation complaints, he said.
After fending them off for months, Dennis said, he prevailed, adding, “You have to stand firm with these guys.”
Food vendors are licensed by the Department of Health, but there are no assigned locations, city officials said.
Olivia Cardosa, 31, said she’s been losing her battle against the Halal Mafia. When she set up her Mexican truck on West 43rd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, she was attacked by a competitor, she said.
“She said we couldn’t put our cart here,” Cardosa said, describing the confrontation, which was captured on video and published on the Internet blog Midtown Lunch. “Then she jumped on our cart’s hitch trying to prevent us from putting it on the sidewalk.”
Last Monday, when Cardosa arrived at her spot, three giant planters had been moved and cemented into the sidewalk. She claims it was “the halal guys.”
The landlord of the building there, the Durst Organization, agreed it was vandalism.
“Somebody moved our planters and cemented them in place, so we had to chip the cement off to move them back,” spokesman Jordan Barowitz said.
Erez Ella, who recently set up his kosher-food truck on West 46th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues — several feet from a gyro vendor — said he has been threatened since Day One.
“They told me they were going to bring 10 carts and block my spot,” he said.
The next day, his parking garage told him, “We don’t want you here. We want you to have a hard time so that you . . . sell your cart to us.”
Two days later, his truck was riddled with dents.