Midtown Lunch

As we slowly go through the food options at this year’s Bryant Park Holiday Shops, we need to stop everything and discuss something. Doughnuts. Specifically, the ones from Dough. On the 40th Street side, in a kiosk between the Southwest Porch and the ‘wichcraft ice cream/hot chocolate kiosk, lies the best little booth filled with fresh doughnut goodness. Midtowners, this is win to the nth degree.

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Every Tuesday we turn over the site to a different Midtown Lunch’er for his or her recommendations for the best lunch in Midtown. Since Flatiron only gets one day a week in the sun (Fridays), every once in a while we head south a throw a bone to the lunchers that toil away south of 32nd Street. This week it’s Evan, a restaurant PR person with a surprisingly un-PR’ish list of favorite lunchtime restaurants.

Name: Evan

Age: 24

Occupation: Restaurant and Hospitality Public Relations

Where in Midtown do you work? Bullfrog & Baum; we’re in Flatiron on 23rd Street.

Favorite Kind of Food: Every genre has its own kind of amazing going for it, but I’m partial to Thai, Vietnamese, Southern Italian, and Indian.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: anything with okra – do not want.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: Kofoo for quick, cheap, delicious beef bibimbap; Pongsri (on 23rd btw. 6+7th) for solid Thai curries and spicy, bright meat salads; Eataly for tomato focaccia and the calamari salad with olives, capers, and crunchy celery; Iron Sushi (on 3rd btw. 30+31st) for chirashi; Maffei’s (on 22nd & 6th) for a solid Grandma slice or plain cheese New York style (also love the meatballs and garlicky broccoli), Tbsp (on 20th btw. 5+6th) for the vegetable sandwich on focaccia; Taim Mobile for the vegetarian platter or the Sabbich.

“Go-To” Lunch Place You and Your Coworkers Eat at Too Often? Kofoo (on 8th btw. 26+27th). It’s convenient, inexpensive, and all about flavorful, no-nonsense Korean food. The nice lady at the register knows my usual, too (beef bibimbap, extra kimchee).

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The opening of Nino’s Trattoria, now named Nino’s 46 (46th between 5th and 6th), has had many Midtown Lunchers waiting with bated breath after a long repair/remodel after a fire. Back when Zach gave it the full Midtown Lunch treatment in 2009, it hadd a great chicken parm and you could find many menu items under $10. Luncher arastaman003 tipped us off in another post that Nino’s 46 had opened its doors, but with a new menu that makes it hard to find food under the $10 limit (although word is, the menu is going to expand in a few weeks).

Check it out after the jump…

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If any of you happened to host a Thanksgiving Dinner at your house last week, I’m willing to bet money you had a shit-ton of leftovers, and you’re getting sick of turkey. I know I am. I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight Berger’s. It’s flown under the radar of Midtown Lunch for years — probably because it can easily fall into the category of generic deli.

A few weeks ago, I was in the mood for pastrami. I hadn’t had pastrami in Midtown since I tried Marky Ramone’s Cruisin’ Kitchen back in June, so I went to Yelp and searched for pastrami in the area near my office. What popped up was “Berger’s”, which boasts New York’s best pastrami sandwich. Of course, I haven’t tried every pastrami sandwich in New York City, but I assumed Katz’s (which I also haven’t gotten around to trying) is heralded as the best.

According to Berger’s, this is not so.

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Pitopia, the falafel place on Broadway and 37th that shocked everyone by winning the Midtown Lunch best falafel reader’s poll last year, has been open for one full year now.  And to celebrate their first anniversary they’ll be giving away free falafel sandwiches all day long today-  starting now until 11pm tonight, and is only available in store.

Dumplings, man. Dumplings. Jiaozi, baozi, howzi doing. I love ’em. It’s hard not to. They’re one of the wonderful bits of food engineering that predate molecular gastronomy and don’t involve uber-salting/pickling/preserving as a miracle of pre-refrigerated goodness. I could down ’em for entire meals. The major Midtown draw has been the heavily-contentious Rickshaw Dumplings truck and stand, with the occasional decent draw of xiao long bao or steamed fluffy buns at other Chinese-centric locations. You can get ’em at Tabata. Now, though, you can get your dumplings in a hip space to hang out and have some coffee with your potstickers. Spring, which opened just this past Monday, answers the unasked question of “When can I be a dumpling hipster without venturing into the Cyclopean horror city that is Williamsburg?”

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For those of you who don’t feel like Thansgiving is enough, you should be going to The Turkey Leg Ball, the annual party thrown by the dudes from Immaculate Infatuation (who are Midtown Lunchers!) It goes down a week from today (Weds 11/28) at Hudson Terrace- which is kind of in Midtown (on 46th btw 11+12th)- and features BBQ done by the guys from Foreign & Domestic in Austin.  The event always sells out, and there are only a few tickets left, so don’t procrastinate.  Get all the details and buy your tickets here>>