Midtown Lunch

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week, our Happy Hour Correspondent “Mamacita” will post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap.

It’s well documented that Zach and many of us Midtown Lunchers love to go hog wild on an all you can eat buffet. Likewise, once the clock reads quitting time the happy hour ideal consists of gorging ourselves on free appetizers with a good drink to lull us into the night. We all know Spice Fusion has been an ML Indian buffet mainstay, but I was surprised to find they also have an all night happy hour with free veggie or meat hors d’oeuvres. This might be the only Indian food happy hour I’ve ever heard of, so my curiosity and appetite were piqued!

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Is this too much Pump for one day? Or is it good to get it out of our system and never speak of it again? The Pump location in the food court on 3rd Ave. btw. 49+50th (with Sophie’s, Pampano, & the new Urban Lobster Shack) has closed. Makes sense now that they have their crazy new Chipotle-like location on 52nd btw. Lex+3rd.

I see a trend developing here.  A few months ago I was enticed by “chinese crunchy things” and “Thai peanut sauce” into trying something at Just Salad for the first time, and more recently Pump started offering their healthier version of “Rafiqi’s street meat”.  Like the Thai crunch wrap at Just Salad, it was enough to get me to enter a place that I would have never considered eating at before.  Clearly it’s a smart marketing strategy.  How else are they going to expand their business?  They already have the mindless, boring, Midtown masses eating their “healthy” less flavorful lunches (I don’t care what they say, fat=flavor people), so the only way to get to us (the real eaters) is to offer stuff like this.  And what can I say?  I couldn’t resist.

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In perhaps the craziest 8th Ave. price hike of all time, the Times Restaurant (formerly known as Kashmir) has raised the price of their lunchtime buffet to $14.95!?! With the New York Times cafeteria closed yesterday for health reasons, I have no doubt the places around 8th Ave. and 40th Street will be extra crowded today.  But $9 to $15 in under a year?  That’s crazytown.  I’d recommend walking up to 47th for Spice Fusion’s $11 buffet. [Photo and News Courtesy of The NYTPicker]

Related:
Adventure Lunchers Should Flock to Kashmir Buffet
Kashmir Becomes “The Buffet of Record”?

The pop up branch of Ma Peche located in the mezzanine of the Chambers Hotel (aka Momofuku Midtown) has made a few changes to their lunch menu.  The $10 Midtown Lunch specials remain untouched, but they’ve replaced with the fennel salad with a satur farm lettuce/leeks number topped with a poached egg ($14).  And they are also starting to randomly offer items from the dinner menu during lunch service as specials. Yesterday, you could have gotten the dinnertime pork ribs ($16) or the fried brussels sprouts dish (that is just like the ssam bar dish minus the puffed rice.)  Now all this stuff is completely outside of the ML price range, and you know I never spend more than $10 for lunch. But let’s say I happened to forget that rule on one particular day… and maybe ended up trying a bunch all of those new dishes… and then posted about it… that post would probably say that everything I ate was delicious.

Related:
Your First Look at Ma Peche’s “Midtown Lunch” Specials

• Anybody know what’s in Washoku Cafe’s hot and sour soup!? [Midtown Eating]
• Anybody seen the cart on the NW corner of 47th & 3rd? [Midtown Eating]
• Has the service at Bon Chon (aka Mad For Chicken) gotten any faster? [Midtown EAting]
• Are there any subway churros of note? [Eating Outside Midtown]

After I posted about the not so great $5 burrito I had at Mi Nidito last month (on 8th Ave. btw. 51+52nd), I got this email from Lunch’er Jill sticking up for them.

We had our office Christmas party at Mi Nidito a few weeks ago. I had suggested the place to my coworkers because, since Chipotle moved in next door, I have been worried that the restaurant would close and I wanted to provide some financial support. As I was sitting with the group, I glanced over at the bar and noticed a guy waiting for his takeout order. Wait, is that Zach from midtownlunch.com? It couldn’t be. He never eats here. Well, apparently it was you, waiting for your not-very-good food.

I was so sad to read your piece about Mi Nidito. (especially the face that Chipotle is having such an impact). I thought maybe since Mi Nidito served drinks their happy hour would tide them over financially. Apparently not. As a long time fan I have to suggest a few dishes that I think are really great and you should try sometime.

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