Midtown Lunch

Just a friendly reminder… today is the last day for the Bon Appetit Pop Up Cafe, so if you haven’t made it up to Lincoln Center (on 64th and Columbus) for a sandwich made by Emeril Lagasse, Michael White, Bill Telepan or Missy Robbins (all for $10 or less) you’ll want to do that today between 11am and 3pm.

Related:
Your First Look at the Now Open Bon Appetit Cafe (aka Is It Worth the Trek to Lincoln Center?)

Do you wonder what the ML contributors do when they’re not eating lunch in Midtown? (They’re actually pretty easy to stalk!)

Photo courtesy of Food in Mouth

Danny downed a Shack Stack on the UWS (which is also available here in Midtown, btw) while Ultraclay was eating some delicious sausage at the Vanderbilt in Brooklyn. Blondie and Brownie visited Eddie’s Sweet Shop in Forest Hills to train for some ice cream eating challenge in San Francisco, and hit up Parked on Governor’s Island– which they decided could learn a lot of lessons from the Vendy Awards.

Curious about the other Midtown Lunch cities? Andrea just discovered a decent Korean lunch in Chinatown, Jamie is all about this boozy bread pudding she had in the Reading Terminal Market, and here’s Zach getting excited about… fake chicken. (WTF, dude!?)

When Leña Latin Grill opened up in June (on 35th btw. 5+6th), we pegged it as a “Latin Chipotle” (yes, South American would have made more sense) and comments were mixed. Since then I’ve stopped in several times and to be honest… I keep going back for more. See why after the jump.

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In honor of tonight’s premiere of Top Chef Just Desserts, Bravo is going all out today offering free desserts all over the city.  You can visit participating locations from 1-3pm today (a full list is here) or you can follow their truck around- which we’re hearing is on 50th btw. 6+7th right now giving out ice cream, cupcakes, Godiva, and Momofuku compost cookies. (And according to this, Gail Simmons will be there at 11:30am!)  You can follow the truck around courtesy of Bravo’s Twitter Account, which we’ve added to the ML Twitter Tracker for the day.  Freeloaders, engage.

I guess it’s also worth noting there is a Open Table promotion going on tonight, but for that free dessert you have to buy dinner. (Screw that!)

The finalists for the 6th Annual Vendy Awards were announced last month, but those 5 vendors aren’t the only ones who are going to be at Governor’s Island next Saturday.  There will also be 5 new vendors competing in the Rookie category (last year’s winner, Schnitzel & Things, is up for the big prize this year) and 5 more vendors in the Dessert category, which was announced today.  And the finalists are…  Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, The Dessert Truck, the Guerilla Ice Cream Truck, Kelvin Natural Slush, and the dragon beard candy vendor that our very own Danny posted about on his blog Food in Mouth a few weeks ago.

The Vendys have been sold out for almost a month (you snooze you lose!), but if you’ve got deep pockets there are still some sponsorship slots open… for example, a $500 Gold Sponsorship gets you 4 tickets (not much more than 4 tickets would have cost at regular price.)  And all the money goes to benefit the Street Vendor Project, so you can feel good about that. We’re hearing the rookie finalists will be announced by the end of the week.

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