Midtown Lunch

If you’ve been living under a rock you might be interested to know that the Shake Shack Theater District is open at last. Early reports are very promising and it seems that they have the line management situation down pretty well. Now all the Shake Shacks in the city have the same basic menu. Shack Burgers. Shack Dogs. Shroom Burgers. Cheese Fries. And they all abide by the same monthly custard calendar. But where the Shacks stand apart is with their concretes–that’s Danny Meyer speak for blended frozen custard treats for the uninitiated. Yesterday three brand new concretes took at bow at the Shake Shack Theater District. Naturally I had to try them all, for the good of Midtown Lunchers everywhere, of course.

Blondie was supposed to join me in this mission, but unfortunately the MTA had other plans so my husband met me at the Shake Shack to help with the concrete recon.

First up: Jelly’s Last Donut: Made from vanilla custard, Doughnut Plant donuts, strawberry preserves, and cinnamon sugar, it’s hard to imagine how this could be bad ($6.75). This concrete lived up to expectations. There were plenty of doughnut bites and strawberry preserves worked through. It was in Luncher “Kopper’s” words, “sublime.” Now, if you aren’t into doughnuts that have been dunked, you’ll probably want to house this sucker fairly quickly because the doughnut bits do soak up the custard and can get soggy if you let it sit. But if you love doughnuts and ice cream there’s pretty much little chance of your concrete sitting for very long.

Next up: Pretzel! The Concrete.This one is made with chocolate custard, peanut butter sauce, chocolate covered pretzels, and marshmallow sauce ($6.25). Again, how could something with those ingredients not be good? The chocolate covered pretzel bites were especially awesome–just right for those who like to get a sweet and salty and the custard is really rich and chocolatey. My only quibble here is that it could use more of those pretzel bites. The pretzel chunks were really good, but they were a bit few and far between for me.

Last but not least, The Great White Way ($6.25). True to its name, this is an all white concrete made with vanilla custard, marshmallow sauce, and crispy crunchies. It’s basically a Rice Krispy Treat in custard form. My husband is not much of a marshmallow fan and he was surprised by this one. While it was still too sweet for him, he actually liked it a lot more than he expected. This concrete goes down pretty easy, but I’ll admit that it leaves a bit of a cloying aftertaste. The marshmallow sauce seemed pretty concentrated on the very top of my concrete, so it might be worth giving this another little swirl in your cup to even out the marshmallow distribution.

All in all the Theatre District Shake Shack custards are full of win. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’m somewhat of a student of the SS concrete menus and while I’ll always have a space in my heart for the Concrete Jungle (vanilla custard, hot fudge, peanut butter, and bananas), overall I think that the Theatre District stands out as having concrete options. Now if we could only get them to serve the Lumberjack Concrete Special…

Shake Shack Theater District, 44th St. and 8th Ave