Midtown Lunch

I love how after three years of doing Midtown Lunch, plus Street Meat Palooza and Street Meat Palooza 2 there are still chicken and lamb over rice surprises left in Midtown. Take Little Morocco, on the NE corner of 39th & 7th, which I actually read about in the Midtown Lunch forums (yes, they are good for something!) Lunch’er NoPickles posted about the cart under the title “Spiciest Street Meat Cart”, which naturally caught my attention. After reading his rave, I had to check it out.

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El Rey del Sabor has added a third cart to their Mexican food empire. They’ve been flirting with the just out of ML bounds location on 28th Street and 6th Ave. for months now, but made it a permanent spot a few weeks ago.  This should considered great news for lunchers in the southern part of Midtown.  Their other two carts are located on 60th & 3rd, and 49th & 3rd.

It sounds like the cops were pretty busy with vendor complaints on Monday.  There was the ice cream fist fight on 50th & 6th, the Schnitzel Truck twittered that cops were called to a vendor fight downtown, and there was this thing on 45th & 5th…

I got word a few weeks ago that the owner of Kwik Meal, Muhammed Rahman, has a brother who opened a new cart on 45th & 5th, and was selling biriyani (in addition to chicken and lamb over rice.) Even though this new venture is not associated with Kwik Meal (this year’s Street Meat Palooza winner) in any way, I was still excited to try the food- after all, cooking skills could be genetic, right?  Sadly though, by the time I made it over to the corner, the brother’s cart had disappeared.

You may remember that Kwik Meal, which currently has four carts in their empire, used to park another cart on the corner of 45th & 5th called Kwik Meal 2, before it was stolen from the garage it was parked in.  They still operate Kwik Gourmet on 47th and Park, Quick Delight on 45th & 3rd, and Kwick Meal IV on 37th and 6th. But 45th and 5th has remained Kwik Meal-less… until Monday.

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“Uh… excuse me. Do you know if Sam Sifton eats here?”

If you read any other food blog in the universe besides this one, than by now you know that the New York Times is replacing their food critic, Frank Bruni, with Sam Sifton. Unlike Bruni, who probably didn’t spend a ton of time in the New York Times building (on 8th Ave. btw. 40+41st), Sifton is the culture editor for the paper and one would assume is there every day.  Which leads me to wonder… where does Sam Sifton each lunch every day?

While everybody else is probably wondering what kind of food critic he’ll make- I’m more curious about whether or not anybody has noticed this guy eating at Popeye’s or Ying Du. What about Pick-a-Pita, or even the (hilariously named) Time’s Halal Food cart on the corner of 40th and 8th?

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It looks like Variety Cafe (the giant generic Midtown Deli on 48th btw. 5+6th) has been closed by the department of health for the second time in 3 years. According to somebody on the scene they hung a sign in the window claiming the infractions were minor (like “leaving the cap off the orange juice”.) The sign had already been taken down by the time I got there.

In a stroke of brilliant marketing though, Channel Four (the pub next door that is famous for selling the “bacon explosion”) put one of their young lasses in front to hand out Channel Four flyers to all the confused Variety Cafe fans. You know it’s all fun and games until the DOH comes after you…

Related:
Tale of Two Signs: Variety Cafe Closes for “Repairs”
Original Variety Cafe Post (6/27/2006)

The New York Post weighs in on the new fancy street food trend, and does what they do best: attack for the sake of attacking. The article laughably attacks Le Gamin, Schnitzel & Things, and the newly launched Bistro Truck, despite admitting that the food is pretty delicious.  But my favorite part is where the author blames food trucks for her own slovenliness…

“Who wants to wait 20 minutes for fancy restaurant fare from a cart when half of it is going to wind up stuck in your computer keyboard?”

Uh… and that’s different from eating a plate of old school halal street meat or take out from a brick and mortar restaurant- how?  (Teachable moment: Don’t eat your food over your keyboard, no matter where it comes from!)

Oooh- and it wouldn’t be a proper anti-trend piece without a twitter insult or two…

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I think Mister Softee has gotten a bad rep on Midtown Lunch.  Sure some of them screw over their customers, get into fights, try to intimidate mobile bakeries, and yes, even sell cocaine.  But they’re not all bad!  Take the ladies of Queen Frostine, a new collective of female ice cream truck drivers who have taken it upon themselves to bring some of the fun back to soft serve. We mentioned Miss Softee last week, but at the time I didn’t realize that there are more of them. And they all park in Midtown!

Meet them all, after the jump…

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