Midtown Lunch

Sometimes lunch isn’t enough to fuel your afternoon. Sometimes you need coffee too, so it’s nice to find a place where you can get a good meal and a mean cup o’ joe as well. Demarco Coffee (Lexington Ave. btw. 50th + 50st St.), which opened this month, is that kind of place. Demarco Coffee is based in Queens, where they roast their own coffee beans. But at their Midtown Cafe, you can sample their coffee and choose from a small menu of cafe-style pre-made sandwiches and salads.

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Photo courtesy of Lunch Studio

• The sul lang tang from Gahm Mi Oak is a restorative elixir [Lunch Studio]
• Salvation Taco is “highly recommended for the area”… [SENY]
• …but the tortas miss the mark? [Fork in the Road]
• Win a dinner with Pok Pok’s Andy Ricker and former ML contributor Amy Cao! [GA]
• Apparently Midtown has no terrific lunch deals [Eater]

Spring is slowly approaching and for the past few years, this has meant the return of Macaron Day on March 20th. Organized by François Payard, fourteen bakeries throughout the city will be handing out free macarons (one per customer and while supplies last). Here are the six Midtown locations (+ 1 slightly out of bounds) participating. Sweets-loving Francophile freeloaders engage.

Bouchon Bakery at Time Warner Center, Ten Columbus Circle, Third Floor, (212) 823-9366
Bouchon Bakery at Rockefeller Center, One Rockefeller Plaza, (212) 782-3890
Épicerie Boulud, 1900 Broadway, (212) 595-0303
Francois Payard Bakery, 1775 Broadway/3 Columbus Circle, (212) 956-1775
FP Patisserie, 1 W 59th St, (212) 759-1600
Mad-Mac “The Authentic French Macarons” at Bernardaud, 499 Park Avenue at 59th Street, (973) 225-0930
Todd English Food Hall at The Plaza Hotel, 1 W 59th St, (212) 986-9260

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.

The closing of R.U.B. made me nostalgic for barbecue, so I decided it was high time to visit one of the remaining barbecue spots in Flatiron – BBQue’s Smoke Shack. Given UltraClay’s tentative “first look”, I went with mild expectations.

On a previous walk by BBQue’s, they had handed me a flyer for $2 off a sandwich combo or platter. Of course, it would have been useful, but alas, as these things always work, I didn’t have it on me when I needed it. But considering this discount would bring most of the sandwich combos into the ML budget and the platters would be only $11 or $12, it’s worth trying to get your hands on one.

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Fancy grilled cheeses is one of the best comfort food trends in my book, and to celebrate the city’s best Openhouse Gallery is holding their Big Cheesy competition again! Last year, our very own Melt Shop (on Lex btw 53rd+54th) took home the grand prize and they’re up for it again against Chelsea Market’s Lucy’s Whey, 2011 champ Milk Truck, UWS’s Say Cheese, Murray’s Cheese Bar, LES’s Sons of Essex, and ‘wichcraft. It all goes down in two weekends, the 23rd and 24th, at 201 Mulberry Street from 12 to 7pm. Tickets are $25 for an hour of eating plus Sixpoint tall boys.

We have a pair of tickets to give away to one lucky winner.  Just comment below with your favorite or craziest grilled cheese sandwich ingredients and you’re entered to win. Don’t want to leave it to chance?  Get your tickets here and go root for the home team.

Considering how often I’ve been to Treehaus (3rd Ave. btw 50th+51st) in recent weeks, it’s hard to believe that inside I missed  Kosofresh, a separate eatery specializing in build-your-own bibimbap-style rice bowls.

Kosofresh follows the basic Chipotle model: you choose either the Koso-Bap (rice bowl, $8.45) or Koso-Green (salad bowl, $7.45), you choose your protein (bulgogi, soy garlic chicken, spicy pork, or tofu), additional toppings typically found in bibimbap, and your sauce.

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Gotta love working on 8th. As far as the food hell of Midtown goes, we’re the scrappy underdog. The tourist crap doesn’t kick in until you get to the 40s, so while there’s not as much in food truck options and a lot of long-timer places that come and stay, you get gems every now and then. Two of those gems are the greats of Dominican elevator shaft cuisine, but there’s a third diadem in the crown now. A fine member of the vast Midtown Lunch clandestine operations group readership clued us in to Cafe Mofongo, which quietly opened just off of 8th on 39th, and I’m all about another cheap, real, and tasty Latin restaurant to compete with the elevator empire.
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Got this report the other day from Lunch’er Dan L. about Daheen Wang Mandoo, the newish Korean bao place on 32nd btw. 5+6th.

With Bunch opening last fall and Daheen Wang Mandoo opening earlier this year, wang mandoo are taking K-Town by storm. For the uninitiated, just what are wang mandoo? They’re basically the Korean version of the more familiar Chinese baozi, which are fluffy steamed buns stuff with goodies inside. They are not to be confused with mool mandoo, which are basically the Korean version of Chinese jiaozi (aka dumplings), or goon mandoo, which are just the fried version of mool mandoo, similar to how Chinese guotie are just the fried version of jiaozi. So for example, although neighbors Mandoo Bar and Daheen Wang Mandoo look like they should be mortal enemies, Daheen’s true enemy is Bunch, which is directly across the street in Food Gallery 32.

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