Midtown Lunch

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 Friday afternoon our Happy Hour Correspondent “Mamacita” will post 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.

A few months after I wrote that McCormick’s was one of the best food happy hours, our long time commenter Adam posted that:

“I went here tonight with a friend. The burger was fantastic for $3.95 (NOTE: Yes, it seems that they raised the price a buck, but it was still damn good). Best $4 burger I’ve ever had, and for $4 I will be back again. The burger was a perfect medium-rare, big, and juicy, and did I mention $4? This could easily become a bad habit. “

There is nothing wrong with a $4 burger, even Blarney Stone can’t beat that. I figured enough time had passed by that I should follow up on McCormick’s burger at the bar special and see what other changes had been made.

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We’ve never found any particular reason to pay a visit to Abatino’s Pizza, which is a local slice chain with 6 locations around New York city including Terminal 8 at the JFK airport, and bears a striking resemblance to other non-noteworthy names, Sbarro, Famous Famiglia and the like. However, the location at 944 Eighth Ave (between 55th & 56th St) emailed us, asking to inform ML readers that they’ll be pricing all of their sandwiches at $2.99, all day on July 11th, 18th & 25th. Although the reviews on Yelp aren’t promising, if anyone’s tried the food here, please let us know in the comments if this $2.99 sandwich special is something to get excited about.

Yesterday’s nice weather afforded me an opportunity to take a lunchtime stroll and I spotted a sign that I wished I had seen, um, four weeks ago. Apparently Menchanko-Tei (my favorite ramen place in midtown) is offering a May lunch time promotion. It’s only at the 55th street location (sorry East siders) and it’s only for dine-in customers from 11:30 until 5pm. The Hakata, Shoyu and Assari Ramen are all $5.75 (normally $8.50). I hope I’ll have a chance to squeeze one of these lunches in before the end of the month.

Menchanko Tei, 43-45 W. 55th St. (btw. 5+6th), 212-247-1585

I guess we’re not the only ones celebrating a birthday!  Get a full list of ‘wichcraft locations here.

We’re not the biggest fans of the ‘bux, but we do like 1/2 price, so consider this your heads up that starting this afternoon and running through May 15th Starbucks is doing half price frappucinos each day from from 3:00pm until 5:00pm.