QBA Cuban Kitchen

After a dank stretch of days like a defrosting freezer, yesterday was lunch-truck weather, all bracing ocean breezes and incandescent sun, and down in the one of the Lunch Truck Districts — the block of Hudson between York and Grand — the sidewalk was cheek-by-jowl with the lunchtime office crowd, open-jacketed and bare-legged in the sunshine. Lines were longest at The Taco Truck, but they were second-longest at the phonetically charming QBA Cuban Kitchen, newly arrived here from the rarified heights of Montclair.

Like a good street game of three-card Monty, QBA’s entree menu gives you three choices: chicken, pork, steak. (Well, four if you count the plantains, but do you?) The steak proved as elusive as the truck’s Twitter-chatter had forecast — steak was promised, then rescinded (sold out), then promised. Then, it was sold out. But here’s how the chicken and pork come: rough-cut, in a pile on a bed of white rice (real and regular, not instant) and black beans (mild but savory, the platonic ideal). Meats are marinated, so says QBA, but that taste is faint; what you do notice is how they’re cooked: juicy mostly, for the chicken, and meltingly shreddable, the pork. Pickled onion bits cut the starch in sour little bursts. Comes with a not-full-enough container of homemade sauce, pick your own: guava-habanero bbq was pleasant but nothing special, and the jalapeno cilantro aji, “not for the novice,” was fresh if basic, and fine for the novice. (The truck also serves a Cuban sandwich, which we did not try.)

The meat entrees are $8, which makes them, like street betting, a little pricey for everyday ventures, but a solid indulgence now and then for a solid plate of starch and protein. The best value is the $1 mojito limeade (non-alc), as sharp and sparkly as the Hudson glittering a short block away. Buy one of these, wander past the twisted-girder WTC memorial, find a bench waterfront and watch the wind rumpling the hedge-funders’ pompadours and doing its best on the trim office-girl skirts.