PROFILED: Midtown Lunch’er “Ruth Reichl” (PLUS Citymeals on Wheels’ “Global Street Food Festival” Ticket Giveaway)
Every Tuesday I turn over the site to a different Midtown Lunch’er for his or her recommendations for the best lunch in Midtown. This week I couldn’t be more excited to have Ruth Reichl, the Editor in Chief of Gourmet Magazine, which just so happens to be the media sponsor of “Street & Savory: A Global Street Food Festival” on Monday night to benefit Citymeals-on-Wheels. The event is in Rock Center and will feature street cart inspired fare by a long list of famous restaurant chefs as well as food from some of our favorite street vendors, like The DessertTruck, The Treats Truck, Red Hook Ballfield Vendors and (the one I’m most excited about) the Los Angeles based Korean taco truck: KOGI BBQ. Get more info about the event, plus register to win a pair of tickets (valued at $1200!) after Ruth recommends her favorite spots to eat lunch in Midtown.
Name: Ruth
Age: 61
Occupation: Eater, Editor, Writer
Where in Midtown do you Work?: Conde Nast
Favorite Kind of Food: There is almost nothing I won’t happily eat.
Least Favorite Kind of Food: The only thing I won’t eat is honey.
Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: The Mysore masala dosa, saag paneer, and brinjal bhartha at Minar (on 46th btw. 6+7th.) White rice, chicken, all the vegetables, no white sauce at the Halal Chicken Curry Cart (on 43rd and 6th.) Kalbi, bibimbap, yukgaejang, and soondubu from Kang Suh (on B’way and 32nd.) The spicy tendon from Wu Liang Ye (on 48th btw. 5+6th.) Ma po tofu and twice cooked pork belly from Szechuan Gourmet (on 39th btw. 5+6th.) Spaghetti neri with squid, crudo, fried blowfish tails, grilled fish, fish soup from Esca (on 43rd & 9th.) Chawan mushi with uni and omakase sushi from Sushi Zen (on 44th btw. B’way+6th). Lasagna, pasta, and salads from Insieme (on 7th Ave. and 51st.) And Le Bernardin (on 51st btw. 6+7th) is pure luxury; everything is fabulous.
“Go-To” Lunch Place You and Your Coworkers Eat at Too Often? We order in from Grand Sichuan. I’m addicted to the peppers in black bean sauce.
Place(s) you discovered thanks to Midtown Lunch? Taj Delhi Chat (now called Khodiar Chaat, on 6th Ave. btw. 37+38th) — how did I miss this?
If you could work anywhere (just because of the lunch) where would it be and why? Singapore. Need you ask? Best street food on earth. I could eat carrot cake (no carrots, no cake, spicy not sweet), every day.
Is there anything you’d like to ask the Midtown Lunch readers? Is there any great Mexican food in midtown? After 10 years in LA, I’m always hungry for real Mexican, and I have yet to find it.
Alright… before we get to that- let’s talk Street Food inspired fancy food tasting event! “Street and Savory” takes place on Monday night, June 8th inside Rockefeller Center. To win a pair of tickets to the event, recommend some Mexican food to Ruth in the comments- or wax poetic about what dish you would be most excited to try from Citymeals-on-Wheels’ “Global Street Food Festival”. A complete list of chefs and the dishes they will be serving can be found here. (I’m most excited for Korean tacos from Kogi BBQ Truck in LA, and Donald Link’s boudin from Cochon in New Orleans!)
Tickets start at $600 each, but using this discount link from Serious Eats: New York you can purchase tickets for $450. I know it’s expensive, but all the money goes to a great cause (Citymeals-on-Wheels), it’s tax deductible, and this lineup of food is probably the best you’ll see at one of these events all year long. If you can afford to go, consider buying tickets to support this great charity. If you can’t afford the $450, but you really want to go to the event, and support the cause in some way, call the City Meals on Wheels event line at 212-687-1290. I’m sure they will be happy to try and work something out.
The comments will close, and the winner will be contacted at Noon EST on Friday (6/5).
And as always if you want to be next week’s Profiled: Midtown Lunch’er (or know somebody you’d like to nominate), email me at zach@midtownlunch.com.
Posted by Zach Brooks at 11:45 am, June 2nd, 2009 under PROFILE: Midtown Lunch'er.
116 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
116 Comments
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I don’t know about Mexican in midtown… I’ve only tried El Rey de Sabor once, and it seemed authentic but more pricey than Super Tacos on 96th and Broadway. Anyways, for the street food festival, the kimchi quesadillas sound the most intriguing to me, esp. since I’ve heard so much about the kogi truck in LA and I love both mexican and korean food.
Also, Ruth Reichl! I stopped lurking at ML and registered here just so I could post something in case you would possibly read it. You are the best food writer I can remember reading; I started reading your nytimes reviews/other writing when I was 11, and I still remember the day you left the times — I was in high school, and I think I cried my eyes out reading about it in the dining section, and resented William Grimes for the whole of his tenure before reconciling somewhat with Frank Bruni. Thank you so much for all of those memories :)
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Wow! The amount of comments: OUTSTANDING, yo! Also, Ruth? 61? WOW! I don’t look half as good at 34. I never thought we’d see more comments then the all you can eat for free Sushi Conveyor Belt thread but, again, going with WOW!
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Ruth, ok it’s a “chain” but Baja Fresh just setup their first beach head in NYC at 465 Lex (45th/46th). I am partial having developed Baja in NJ a few years ago but you probably know the brand from your days in CA – for fast-casual, it’s really tasty stuff. Can’t beat the Mahi-Mahi taco.
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Hey! Ok, so this is out of the way but who cares! It is amazing! You HAVE to go to Cafe habana in nolita for some mexican corn! You can take the BDFV train from Rockefeller Center down to Broadway-lafayette st and its not bad of a walk. The address is 17 Prince St. I’ll take you there myself! I’m not a bad looking guy mind you :)
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love to try kogi, please bring a truck to nyc!
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Don’t know if it’s worth the travel. But if you somehow end up in Williamsburg/Bushwick drunk late one night, Grand Morelos (Grand St & Graham Ave) is a great cheap 24 hour Mexican diner/bakery. They have awesome cheap tacos and burritos. I had the pork Al Pastor taco recently which had pineapple in it. It was awesome!
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Another vote for La Paloma. It was my go to burrito place when I worked in Times Square.
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Just read about MidtownLunch in the NYT’s today…and the benefit on Monday. Plus, reading “Tender to the Bone” after hearing Ruth R. speak recently…only problem is reading all of these makes me want to eat!!! Want to try all of the MidTown lunch favorites!
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This blog makes me wish I still worked in midtown!
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grasshopper tacos at toloache on 50th and 8th, does any other place do grasshoppers?
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La Esquina – a steak taco and an order of Moros y Cristianos!
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I can’t believe no one’s mentioned Chavella’s yet. It’s definitely not in midtown, but it’s COMPLETELY worth the hike out to Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Chavella’s has the best Mexican food I’ve ever had, it’s cheap, and the restaurant itself is unpretentious and friendly. Crisp taquitos with mole sauce, authentic tortas, incredible quesadillas, grilled corn with chipotle mayonnaise and cotija cheese, amazing tacos, micheladas, flan that I could happily eat at every meal and I don’t even particularly like flan… the list goes on. Ruth, please go – you won’t regret it!
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My deaarest “Ruth”
Pray tell … how is it that you can actually see through that matted tangle of hair?
Chuck, Phd
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I wish I had a good Mexican rec for midtown, but I’m still looking myself.
As for the Citymeals-on-Wheels’ “Global Street Food Festival,” what an awesome sounding event and a great cause. I’d love to try Kogi’s Kimchi Quesadilla and Michael Psilakis’Roasted Pork Shoulder Gyro.
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i wish i work in midtown just to try all these food options… my options around where i work are pretty limited.
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I know nothing about Mexican food, so I’m useless in that regard. As for the event, everything sounds pretty incredible but I’d have to say the fried clam roll would be amazing. In all honesty, the snow cone sounds pretty good too…haven’t had one in ages.
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I also recommend Hell’s Kitchen as a tasty restaurant, though I prefer the cheap to-go kind of Mexican.
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I have a special place in me for taco bell so I don’t think I’m the one to be giving mexican recommendations.
And everything at the event sounds too overwhelmingly good to pick just one.
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La Paloma has great burritos on 45th at 9th. Being from Southern California, I’m going to say that’s about as good as it gets :)
For regular old California/NewMexico/Arizona Mexican food, I HIGHLY recommend Los Dos Molinas on 18th and park. I know it’s not midtown but when the food is good enough…..
Try the roasted green chile….yum!!!! Tell Eduardo Rebecca sent you!