The Halal Guys: Cashing In on Street Cred

Some empires are managed from a distance: in corner offices, from cellphones on beaches, under palm fronds while being fanned by servants.

Hesham Hegazy, the general manager of the Midtown street-food empire the Halal Guys, prefers sitting by a window at a Starbucks at West 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue, where night after night he can observe his street-cart workers as they serve platter after platter of chicken and rice for ever-replenishing lines of customers.

One recent evening, Mr. Hegazy, 54, wearing a traditional kufi, sat with a coffee at one of his regular tables, with two Halal Guys carts within sight across the way. He will sometimes sit there late into the night. “To watch the guys,” he said, gesturing to the scene.

Mr. Hegazy manages one of the longest-running and best-known food-cart businesses in New York City with a style best described as old-fashioned. He receives email but almost never responds to it, preferring to conduct business over the phone or in person at the coffee shop.

To proudly illustrate a story about the Halal Guys being the first halal cart to secure a trademark, he made a fast phone call in Arabic; moments later, a boyish-looking young man appeared at the table with a takeout bag bearing the logo as proof.

But things are about to change for the Guys. More than a decade after three Egyptian men switched from selling hot dogs from their Midtown cart to serving halal food to Muslim cabdrivers, the Halal Guys are about to become a fast-food chain.

In the parts of Midtown and Downtown Manhattan that *I* frequent one just about trips over the “halal” food carts.Although they do smell good I almost never see anyone buying anything from them.And this is anywhere between late morning and late afternoon.

Halal meat comes from tortured animals.

So does kosher meat, although halal is worse.

Not to mention both meats have their religion’s prayers said over them - take that as you will.

Modern slaughterhouse techniques are far more humane than either.

You don't know what you're talking about, but you're opening your mouth anyway. Kosher meat comes from tortured animals? If it did, it would not be kosher. Judaism places GREAT emphasis on being humane toward animals. You are even allowed to violate the Sabbath in certain very narrow cases to alleviate the suffering of an animal, such as when it's giving birth and requires assistance. Kosher slaughter is done by a highly trained individual. The surgically sharp blade is inspected for the slightest nick between each kill. The knife is drawn in one smooth motion across the throat, simultaneously severing the trachea, esophagus, major blood vessels and nerves. Tests have shown that the animals do not shy from the knife. The blood drains away at a rapid rate so that properly done, the animal falls dead within about 30 seconds or so. Temple Grandin has indicated that properly done, kosher slaughter is humane.

What more do you want? Now halal slaughter does not place any emphasis on avoiding pain or suffering to the animal. From the photos I've seen online, some of the poor beasts are just hacked apart alive. I've seen pictures of mass slaughters where hundreds or thousands of lambs or calves are decapitated, one after the other, splashed with each others' blood, terrified out of their minds. You can't tell me that the 20th animal was killed as humanely as the first, because the slaughterer's arms would be tired and unable to chop with precision.

You don't know what you're talking about, but you're opening your mouth anyway. Better get your facts straight before presenting them to the world as “fact”.

The MODERN kosher slaughterhouses do NOT hoist the animals to then slit their throats. Mostly those holdout old fashioned kosher slaughterhouses are the ones in South America or in the hinterlands.

So in other words, you’re admitting that traditional kosher slaughterhouses, as well as current kosher slaughterhouses “in South America or in the hinterlands” (wherever the “hinterlands are), DO “hoist the animals to then slit their throats.”

Well gee, since that’s a “straight” FACT in the world even today, and even you admit it, do I get to “open my mouth anyway” about it? Or should I ask your permission first?

Also, good thing “modern” kosher slaughter is done “everywhere” within first world countries, and that there are no “hinterlands” in first world countries. Because that would mean your nasty mouth should have stayed doubly shut before you opened it. And with so MUCH to say, that would be hard to bear, now wouldn’t it?

You cannot equate even the old fashioned kosher slaughter technique with halal because in order to do kosher slaughter, the individual has to be extensively trained in both the laws of kosher slaughter and the technique. If the cut is not smooth and in one fluid motion, the meat from that animal is not kosher. In halal slaughter, no professional training is required. Anyone can basically start stabbing away at the unfortunate animal. The blade does not have to be inspected. It's amateur hour in many cases, and the animal suffers greatly. I do not condone any cruelty to an animal being slaughtered, whether it be the old-fashioned method of hoisting in kosher slaughter or the practice of halal slaughter. I don't even eat any sort of red meat.

Your statements equated kosher slaughter with halal, and both were presented with a definite pejorative tone about them. So indeed, you don't know what you are talking about, and I seriously suspect you of being at least a closet anti-semite. Attacking kosher slaughter is one of the first ways countries express their anti-semitism.

So stunning an animal by brutish men quickly and often inaccurately, so that it is not properly stunned and goes into de-hairing tanks of boiling water fully conscious, or killing birds with whirling blades at a slaughter line speed which might result in mistakes that result in pain or distress to the animal are better methods? I remain unconvinced.

Anti-Semite? So soon? Well I guess it’s my fault for showing that you insulted me, and that there are truthful aspects to what I said. That’s the punishment for being right, isn’t it? Being called an anti-Semite?

Of course that makes you a collectivist totalitarian communist prison camp proponent for politically incorrect untermenschen, right?

Because that is the point of calling someone an anti-Semite, to group then for future dehumanization treatment and re-education, especially when they are aware of an unpleasant truth?

Yeah, you’re just the frickkin Light Brigade, ain’tcha?

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