Midtown Lunch

Back in September, I had the privilege of giving LT burger a first look for lunch. Although the $10 burger with no fries or cheese didn’t quite qualify as a Midtown Lunch, I noticed the 5-7 pm happy hour didn’t look so bad with $5 Hoegaarden Witte, Brooklyn Seasonal, Ommegang Hennepin, Sixpoint Sweet Action, and… Bud Light! This week we went to try it out.

The specials are ok, not great, but $5 for decent beers isn’t too bad of a deal in midtown. The atmosphere is clearly middlebrow, like it belongs in suburbia… except that it’s in an ancient building that’s been renovated, so it’s got an old New York charm. It’s not dark, not loud, not cheap. It’s certainly no dive. But the day I went, there seemed to be a lot of women, and that’s something you don’t see often.

The downer is… nobody really seemed to be having a ton of fun. Maybe it was the too-bright lighting, maybe it was because it was early in the week, or maybe it was because the service was shitty. Who knows. But the food was great. I’ll not subject LT Burger’s wings to the full treatment of Buffalo wings since they’re not on the menu. Instead they offer a BBQ or “Sweet and Sticky” wings (we got the latter) for a preposterous $9 for six of ‘em. Look, they’re really tasty, with kind of a Thai peanutty flavor, but they’re certainly not worth the price. And the sauce on the side, whatever it was supposed to be, tasted like McDonald’s special sauce that you would find on a Big Mac. Totally didn’t go with the Asian flavored wings.

What worth the price on LT Burger’s Happy Hour menu? The fuckin’ amazin’ cheesy curly fries with smoked gouda and pickled jalapeno. For five bucks, I expected them to rip us off with a thimble full of food. But there was a fantastically large portion, and the flavor was so good I wanted to lick the paper left in the bottom of the fry basket after we had gotten every last tidbit of potato and cheese in our faces.

We also tried a green chile burger, which was on the specials menu. It was good, but not as good as those fries!

So, a run-down… if you’re a dive-goer, tried-and-true, LT Burger might not be the place for you. But if you’re looking for something that’s OK around Bryant Park, give it a shot… at least for the cheesy curly fries!

LT Burger, 8 W. 40th Street, 212.582.8200