Midtown Lunch

Amazingly we’ve never written about the food at Main Noodle House, located on 6th Ave (between 37th & 38th St.). We have no excuse for this – clearly they’re doing something right, as they do brisk business with both the tourist and business crowd, and even earned endorsement from Salon.com and Gilt Taste’s food luminary, Francis Lam via Twitter. Such feedback is entirely justified by their cheap lunch combo specials and humongous portions.

It’s a fairly small, cramped space, and during the weekday lunch rush, you’re definitely looking at a 20-30 minute wait for a table. Customers waiting for take-out orders and for a dine-in table are mashed into a corner near the counter and front entrance, where they must dodge waitresses hurtling by, and customers entering and exiting the restaurant. But a little discomfort and a wait is more than worth the lunch deals here.
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I walk by the Midtown east branch of Potbelly (44th btw. Lex+3rd) every day and haven’t seen any movement until couple days ago when suddenly metal fence, tables, and chairs appeared out of nowhere. Then we got word from Lunch’er Emmet that a worker at Potbelly told him they will open this Wednesday. We know how excited you guys are about Potbelly, and it sounded like Andrea loved the Downtown location– so we will most definitely be keeping an eye on this one…  UPDATE: Just got confirmation from the PR people.  Potbelly will indeed be opening this Wednesday.

Lunch from Num Pang Midtown (on 41st btw. Lex+3rd). Photo by Tina Wong

• Word of Cer Te’s new Texas Heart Attack sandwich has made it to Texas… [Houston Press]
• … and England. [Daily Mail]
• The pumpkin sesame loaf from Paris Baguette is a good choice [SENY]
• Tri Tip Grill is coming soon to Grand Central [Eater]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so 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. Mamacita is taking this week off, so Clay has stepped up to the plate.

When drinking in Midtown, I tend to pay a little (and sometimes a lot) extra for luxuries like outdoor seating, a quality selection or great food. Still, when I come across a proper bargain, I get pretty excited. So when I stumbled on a sign advertising $5 glasses of wine at L’ybane, a French Mediterranean restaurant on 8th Avenue, I knew I had to investigate.

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It’s been awhile since we dropped in on Sami’s Dosa Cart, which in my opinion is one of the best still semi under the radar cart options in midtown, so I was happy to see it getting some serious love in the forums. The dosas are a natural pick, but the Masala Uthappam also makes for a great lunch. Read more »

Every Friday our man UltraClay goes south of the ML boundaries in search of a delicious lunch. Sometimes it’s Murray Hill south or the Flatiron District, sometimes Gramercy and everything in between- but we just like to call it Flatiron Lunch.  This week Brian H. is stepping in for Clay…

You don’t often see the contributors on ML reviewing salads. Zach has expressed an aversion to leafy greens over the years and the rest of us also tend to like our food fried, buttery, and meaty – in other words, with lots of flavor. Another reason we don’t cover healthy food very often is because it’s so darn expensive. It’s a lot cheaper (and more fun) to rack up the calories than to design your own salad.

And the truth is I probably would not have gone out of my way to check out Quality Greens, the new salad bar concept at FoodParc, if it wasn’t for the promise of a taste of Tanoreen. The Middle Eastern restaurant in Bay Ridge is one of my favorites in the entire city and since an hour-long ride on the R train is not how I like to spend my weekends, I’ve only been there a handful of times. So when I read that Tanoreen was coming to Midtown, I could barely contain my excitement. Why do you think I hijacked this column from ultraclay this week?

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