(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
At some point after launching his Langos Truck a couple of weeks ago, George Prepuk put up a sign explaining what the heck a langos is.
“Every second people go, ‘What’s langos? What’s longos?’,” he told us from the truck, parked on Astor Place over the weekend. “And then some people say, ‘Oh my God, it’s a langos truck!'”
The sign (pulled from Wikipedia) explains that langos is a Hungarian food specialty consisting of baked dough topped with sour cream, grated cheese, and other ingredients like ham and eggplant.
The tzatziki langos. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Prepuk, a Hungarian who now lives in Astoria, previously worked front-of-the-house in fancier restaurants around town. “I was surprised there’s no good Hungarian restaurant in the city,” he said, “and there was no langos truck. Langos is very popular all over Eastern Europe — Slovenia, Romania, Croatia, even Austria.”
On his truck, Prepuk fries the dough — made with the “best American potatoes” — into a crispy disk that’s a little bit smaller than a frisbee, then he tops it with garlic water, sour cream, grated cheese and some chives. The lagos is $6; for $2-$3 extra, you can add toppings like prosciutto or bacon. He sells a version topped with tzatziki as well as sweet varieties such as chocolate pudding and Nutella banana.
George. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
If this sounds like the perfect drunk food, it is. “I’m not going to say that if you eat one it will prevent a hangover,” Prepuk said. “But they help a lot.”
The truck doesn’t yet have a set schedule, but it’s been parking outside of NYU Stern School and in the meatpacking district. To keep up with it, follow it on Facebook and Twitter.