Midtown Lunch

One of the easiest parts of acclimating to central Midtown after seven years in Midtown south has been the getting used to the variety of cart food. No less than half a dozen mobile food vendors surround my new office building. One of the most noticeable has been Kims Aunt Kitchen, which manages to waft a garlic-scented breeze past me as I walk down 46th Street every morning.

It’s been years since we’ve given the cart some proper attention so, I decided it’s about time to follow up on the fried delights that this cart had to offer.

The prices have gone up since Brownie checked out their fish sandwich as a lent option. Sandwiches run from $4-5 and platters top out at $8 for a combo platter – more on that below.

The platters come with a salad – which is to say iceberg and some sad, pale tomato slices – and your choice of white rice, fried rice or lo mein. Given all the chicken and rice available from the halal carts, I almost always go for the noodles from these guys to change things up a little bit.

For the first two months of visiting Kims Aunt, I pretty much only got the bulgoki on lo mein ($6.50). I know, I’m supposed to be checking out the variety of food available, but the sweet sauteed beef and onions kept calling to me.

Finally, my lunching sensibilities kicked in and I decided to try out one of the sandwiches. Like Brownie, “Thou shalt not eat fish from a cart” has always been one of my street food commandments, but I figured if she, Blondie and Zach have all enjoyed it, I should give it a try.

I ordered the flounder sandwich ($5). It was a decent size and packed with fried deliciousness. Honestly, I don’t know enough about fish to say why the flounder is a dollar more than the whiting, but I did enjoy it.

Recently, I stopped by Kims Aunt looking for something I hadn’t tried before. I decided to double up and go with a combo. For $8, I got chicken and shrimp on fried rice. It’s not a bad deal at all. There was no skimping at all, I got a pile of chicken, six shrimp (they promise five) and a large portion of rice. They dispensed with the sad salad and chucked another scoop of chicken in that compartment.

I hadn’t expected the shrimp to be fried (somehow I missed this article from 2009), but in hindsight, how else would it have been served? It’s got a lot of breading around it, but it was still pretty tasty.

Like Zach, I still have no idea who Kim is or what kind of food this is even supposed to be. Bulgoki with its sweet, tangy marinade would seem to indicate Korean, but the rest of the menu and the Latin staff don’t really follow that assumption. What really matters, though is that you can still get a pretty great meal on the cheap here.

Kim’s Aunt Kitchen Cart, 46th street (btw. 5th + 6th)