Midtown Lunch

I’ve always been wary of Lenny’s. Despite the fifteen locations listed on their website, in the past eight years that I have lived in NYC, I hadn’t actually been to a single Lenny’s location until last week (30 Rock location, wuzzup)! A couple of things prevented me from stepping inside. One: it’s a chain. Two: It’s probably overpriced.

Aside from the things preventing me from getting to Lenny’s two other things encouraged me to go: for one thing, our man Chris’ post about Toasties made me realize not to necessarily take these sandwich chains for granted and secondly, Urban Daddy ran a promotion for $3 Lenny’s sandwiches (normally priced at $7.99). Take a gamble on $3? Why not!

Enter The Jimmy T, #5 on Lenny’s menu of signature sandwiches. Maybe I set the bar in my head really low for Lenny’s or maybe it was just beginner’s luck, but I was actually surprised by how awesome this sandwich was.

The Jimmy T consists of two layers of breaded chicken cutlet amid thin layers of melted mozzarella cheese, honey mustard, and topped off with grilled onions and sweet peppers. How can you not love these ingredients together? Everything blended so well and no ingredient over powered the other. Two people even walked by me as I was eating this sandwich and commented on how “beautiful” it looked. Yes, I felt special.

The most surprising thing of all was that this sandwich hardly created a mess. It didn’t fall apart, there was nothing left on the foil when I was done, and for as cheesy it was, it didn’t become a big pile of goop at some point. In fact, the bread was toasted, but was still soft enough that it didn’t cut up the roof of my mouth. I picked marbled rye sliced bread, but also could have gotten it on a roll for the same price, and probably should have as this was the sandwich’s one short-coming. It’s not that big.

For $3, this sandwich is totally worth it, but for $8, it becomes a little less worth it, especially when I know that I’ll have to get chips and potentially more snacks to tide me through the rest of my day after lunch. Still, I’d probably go back another time for the Jimmy T on a roll.

Sometimes there are gems in the chains. For Zach, it was Lenny’s H1 Thanksgiving sandwich served all year round. For my first experience at Lenny’s, I think that I picked one of the gems and will keep my fingers crossed that Urban Daddy does more promos so I can get these sandwiches half off!

Lenny’s, Various Locations including 30 Rock (see website for all 15)