Midtown Lunch

Every Tuesday we turn over the site to a different Midtown Lunch’er for his or her recommendations for the best lunch in Midtown. This week it’s Rose, a legal recruiter who doesn’t like pub food but would be very happy at a all you can eat pasta buffet.

Name: Rose

Age: 38

Occupation: Legal Recruiting

Where in Midtown do you work? Law firm at 55th and 3rd.

Favorite Kind of Food: Mediterranean

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Pub food

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: Omar’s (on 55th btw Lex+3rd) for their falafel platter with Baba Ganoush, Hummus. Pampano Taqueria (on 3rd btw. 49+50th) for their alambre Quesadilla.
Good Health Burger (on 53rd btw. 2+3rd) for their good health burger deluxe. Taksim (on 2nd btw. 54+55th) for stuffed vine leaves. Midtown Restaurant (on 55th btw Lex+3rd) for a greek salad or chicken souvlaki platter. Anything on the Chola buffet (on 58th btw. 2+3rd).

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You would think that being the co-author of what is going to be *the* book on New York City street food, I would know ALL the trucks. I don’t. And even I can be wandering around the city and come across a newbie, like Brooklyn Popcorn. It’s been open and roaming around for three weeks. I’m obviously off my game, but you know that I stopped by to get some popcorn.

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Most of my experience with ramen is limited to home-cooked lunch in graduate school and the occasional visit to one of the many delis near my office… sad, I know. But I’ve been meaning to check out a real ramen restaurant for some time now, so when I heard about Ramen Takumi (3rd Ave. btw. 34th & 35th St.), I jumped at the chance to try it out.

Takumi is a cool-looking place, with a tables and bar style seating. It’s menu features not the pork-laden tonkotsu ramen, but shio, a salt-flavored broth. It’s a clean-tasting soup, salty of course, with a bite of seaweed as well. So if you’re looking for rich, fatty broth, this particular ramen spot probably isn’t for you.

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Numbing Hot Chicken from Hunan Manor. Photo courtesy of Food in Mouth

• Hunan Manor has some tasty looking lunch specials [Food in Mouth]
• Nanoosh will turn you into a wrap convert [Lunch Studio]
• Keen’s named one of America’s Classics by the JBF [Eater]
• Totto Ramen named one of the 5 best ramenyas in the U.S. [Grub Street]
• Did you know that Zach hosts a podcast about music and food? [DNAinfo]

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.

Just steps away from the Port Authority is a bar and gastropub aptly named Beer Authority (40th + 8th). Although the Port Authority has a reputation for being a place you should steer clear of generally, and specifically after dark, at least there is a decent bar! Open since April of 2012 and brought to us by the same folks who own Rattle N Hum, it is a relatively new establishment.

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Treehaus (3rd Ave. btw. 50+51st) has been stepping up their Midtown Lunch sandwich challenge game as of late. Each of their offerings has sounded great, including the newest Rutgers Grease Truck sandwich, and the one I tried tasted great. But what really caught my eye on their menu was the porchetta sandwich. I had high hopes for the meat of this sandwich, especially given the porchetta photos Treehaus has posted on Twitter in recent weeks. Specifically, I was looking for thick slices of juicy pork – something I could really sink my teeth into.

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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.

After a very successful outing to Kalustyan’s upstairs cafe, I decided to check out the recently remodeled – and still associated with Kalustyan’s – Curry Leaf.

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