Midtown Lunch

One of ‘wichcraft’s new Seasonal Sandwiches. Photo courtesy of SENY

• A look at wichcraft’s 5 new sandwiches [SENY]
• A Maxim editor goes to work at Guy Fieri’s American Bar & Grill [MAXIM]
• Land of Plenty is one of the 10 best Chinese places in NYC [FitR]
• A popular Japanese chocolate company is taking over the old Smush space… [R&F]
• … and here’s a look at their original Midtown location [SENY]
• Senor Frogs to open Times Sq. Bro Dungeon [Eater]
• A new batch of restaurants have been announced for Choice Eats [FitR]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week, our Happy Hour Correspondent posts 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.

Whilst going on a mission to Hop Won recently, I noticed a little blue awning with the words “Uncle Charlie’s”. It looked divy enough, so I wrote it down in my notes to check out later. After a little research, I found out Uncle Charlie’s is a gay piano bar & lounge and I was super excited to go somewhere outside of the typical Midtown pub. Plus, it’s got a long happy hour which runs from 4-9 pm; with five dollar 16 oz. drafts with Stella and Blue Moon, and six dollar wines and wells.

Read more »

Our friends at the Vendy Awards have their hand’s full this year. In addition to the 9th annual awards in New York on September 7 and celebrations in Los Angeles and Philadelphia, this year they will add three new cities to the roster. New Orleans will be first on March 13, followed by Boston and Chicago. We may like to claim street food as iconically New York, but the industry is growing across the country and the Vendy Awards will be there to celebrate the best in street vending. At this rate, we may soon see a time when there is a Vendy Award in a different city every single week. Can I be the first to sign up to be a groupie?

Every Friday we go 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.

Shortly after Street Meat Palooza and my corresponding post about City Halal, a reader sent an email suggesting a cart in front of the Museum of Sex on Fifth Ave. He said: “The food is consistently awesome. Way better than Rafiqi’s, which is really the only other option around where I work.” Seemed worth a try.

I hope in the many months it took me to try this cart, the reader has discovered the halal truck on Madison and 28th. It is well liked by those in the area and beyond (I have a friend who lives nearby and her father often insists they go there when he comes to visit her from Connecticut.)

Read more »

Here’s a bit of Flatiron Lunch news before we lay this week’s review on you…

Say it ain’t so!!! It looks like after bouncing back from a Hummer going through their front window, R.U.B (Righteous Urban Barbecue) has closed. This is a huge loss in the barbecue genre for Flatiron and Manhattan as a whole. It seems like now we have to get our bbq fix at BBQue’s Smoke Shack or go over budget at Hill Country or Blue Smoke. And if you are really desperate, Dallas BBQ, at 23rd and 8th Avenue.

Thanks to Lunch’er Hengde for sending over this quick little report about everybody’s favorite Indian place (formerly in the back of a newsstand.) 

There’s a new, 2nd, Indian food vendor in the back of Bombay Fast Food on 6th btw. 37th and 38th. I tried ordering one veg[etable dish] from each side, that’s when they told me that they were two different vendors. The original vegetarian Gujarati vendor on the left is still there, but I didn’t see chaat ingredients on display anymore – hopefully they’ve just moved them back to the kitchen. The new vendor had meat, chicken and lamb curries on the day I stopped in. Their special is 2 vegetables or vegetable + a meat, rice (only one kind – it’s seasoned but not as much as the original’s yellow rice) daal, and naan.  The first vendor’s special is 2 vegs, white or yellow rice, 3 rotis, daal, onions, spicy pickle, and sweet. The 2 Vegetable deal is about a dollar more than the original vendor, but their daal is much thicker than the first vendor’s, which is always more like soup. So that was a nice change, which worked well over the rice. I also tried their aloo matar (potatoes and peas) and saag paneer (spinach w/ cheese) and both were very good. The sauce with the aloo matar was nice and thick. I think the portions of vegs they gave were bigger than the first vendor’s too, those guys been skimping on me a bit lately. But anyway it’s nice to go in there and have twice the options now. Cheers, Hengde.

Bombay Fast Food, 1013 6th Ave (btw 37+38th). 212-840-3767

I missed out on Mmm… Enfes the last couple of years when it spawned up out of the Bryant Park Holiday Market. When we got word from a loyal Twitter follower of their brick & mortar operation starting up on 39th, Brownie gave it a drop-in to share the good news. Limited in the Turkish pastry offerings from the otherwise wonderful Lezzette next to my office and Troy Turkish Grill a few blocks up 9th, the clinical term for getting a chance to review Mmm… Enfes’ Homer Simpson-named offerings is known commonly as “psyched as hell.” Last week Brownie gave us the details on their dolmas, lentil soup, lentil balls, and a big ol’ spread of gozleme, but I wanted to bulk up on burek. Let’s go see what we can gobble at this new Turkish outpost.
Read more »