Story 4 of 9 · 53RD AND 6TH · 1:15 AM
HALALFLATION
Chicken over rice went up to ten dollars. Somebody was taking a cut.
Where this one came from
Built on the halal cart videos and the pledge to make halal eight dollars again. The city charges 200 dollars for a mobile food vending permit, renewed every two years, but a cap on how many exist, dating to the late 1970s, closed the waiting list for more than a decade and pushed vendors to rent permits on a black market for roughly 18,000 to 25,000 dollars every two years. Reselling or transferring a permit is illegal. A City Council bill in December 2025 lifted the cap, phasing in about 17,000 food permits by 2031. The citywide price of chicken over rice has NOT returned to eight dollars; food costs, supplies and the congestion toll drive most of it. This story is one cart. Hassan, the cabbie and the middleman are invention.