Midtown Lunch

Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking some time off (he’s busy being a professional photographer!), so I’m turning to a couple of new Downtown Lunchers to pick up the slack. This week Lunch’er Kevin hits up Yips.

Yips could be a Manhattan restaurant empire, or “yip” could just be a Chinese word for restaurant. I am absolutely clueless. Either way, there are a lot of them. There’s the Yips that Zach wrote about in Midtown (plus Ho Yip), and The Google has listings for three Yip’s downtown as well a Yip’s Dragon Style Kung Fu on the Lower East Side. So while there’s nothing apparently “Dragon Style” about the Yip’s Restaurant on Beaver St. between Broadway and Broad, its sprawling pay-by-the-pound buffet is chock full of ways for cheap Chinese addicts to get their fix.

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking some time off (he’s busy being a professional photographer!), so I’m turning to a couple of new Downtown Lunchers to pick up the slack.  This week Lunch’ers Chris & Kevin hit up the brand new Frites N Meats Truck, and Chris filed this report.

I hate decisions. Quite frankly, they’re one of the reasons I avoid pay-by-the-pound lunch bars because I want a little bit of everything on display. And I’m no different when it comes to choosing a place to eat every week or two to write up for Downtown Lunch. So on Wednesday when we heard about the Frites N’ Meats truck opening, it was like the clouds had opened and the sun was shining on my little cubical. And the best part? The menu was just two items! Burger + Fries. And I had to write about both of them? No choices? The heavens were definitely smiling… or so I thought.

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Earlier in the month the Schnitzel Truck threw competition to the wind, and hipped everyone to a brand new vendor hitting the scene called Frites N Meats. One would assume burger and fries from the twitter account, but it’s all been pretty shrouded in secrecy… until today. The Frites N Meats has been spotted setting up on Greenwich and Chambers this morning- and from the looks of their website they’re serving up burgers and fries. They’ve got two kinds of burgers from DeBragga (grass fed angus, and wagyu), three different buns from Balthazar (brioche, potato onion, and sesame seed), and 5 different kinds of cheese from Murray’s (gruyere, goat, brie, cheddar, and blue.)  Uh… that sounds pretty great.

We found out that their permit is only for that location in Washington Market Park… so sadly there will be no Frites N Meats for Midtown. (Boooooo!) I guess I take a little bit of solace knowing that our Downtown Lunch’ers are incredibly happy right now (but not much.)

Check out the menu, after the jump.

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking some time off (he’s busy being a professional photographer!), so I’m turning to a couple of new Downtown Lunchers to pick up the slack.  This week Lunch’er Kevin (from the blog Food Junta), decides to hit up the recently dissed in the forums Ravioli Fair.

The Ravioli Fair cart outside One Chase Plaza got no love in the forums, and I know Daniel was not a big fan, but I think the place is getting a bad rap. I remembered having some great food there in the past… not only their Italian heroes, but also their pasta dishes. I decided to try it out once again.

Admittedly the results were mixed. You guys were right about the sandwiches, which are pretty underwhelming. Decent, just not anything I think I couldn’t get from one of the half-million pizzerias down here. The pasta, however, was even better than I remembered- and more than justifies this cart’s presence on downtown’s crowded streets.

The lasagna alone should put this place on the map, and even if you’re in the market for a hero, you could do a lot worse than Ravioli Fare.

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking some time off (he’s busy being a professional photographer!), so I’m turning to a couple of new Downtown Lunchers to pick up the slack.  The past few weeks you’ve been treated to Lunch’er Kevin’s thoughts on deli ramen and bourbon chicken. This week Lunch’er Chris is back to defend the Mexican food Downtown.

My first time writing for Zach, I faced the complicated dilemma of who to write about, or, as I so gracefully put it, who to shank? Continuing my prison yard analogy, I’d like to introduce my next victim, one of the options I referred to in that fateful first post, the one I’m going to take down to let people know I’m not backing down. Yes, if you want a burrito, you can go to Chipotle or even Gloria’s Pushcart (on a quick side note, I’m pretty sure she’s Puerto Rican), but what if they just aren’t cutting it? An even better question, what if you want to get beyond the everyday standard of a burrito? The answer to these questions (and more!) can be found at Tajin Restaurant at 85 Greenwich St., just south of Rector St.

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking some time off (he’s busy being a professional photographer!), so I’m turning to a couple of new Downtown Lunchers to pick up the slack.  You all know that I love me some bourbon chicken… and Lunch’er Kevin (from the blog Food Junta), has tracked down an excellent version downtown.

What is bourbon chicken anyway? Not any kind of authentic Cajun food, that seems to be certain. It’s much more like American Chinese food, pretty similar in a lot of ways to teriyaki, which I realize is Japanese rather than Chinese, but that’s beside the point as the predominating influence here is clearly American. If you’ve got a craving for bourbon chicken and want to make it at home you can go to my new favorite website bourbonchickenspices.com whose secret sauces and techniques will allow you to make bourbon chicken “the same or even better than the malls.”

That has got to be the most questionable endorsement of a food product I’ve ever seen, but I’ve had bourbon chicken at malls, airports, and a few other places, and given the context, it’s pretty damn good. Nothing to chase to the ends of the earth, but a safe bet when you’re trapped in a culinary wasteland like an airport or the financial district.

And the bourbon chicken at Cajun Maggies on John St. between Broadway and Nassau is no exception and may be – dare I say? – “even better than the malls.”

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking some time off (he’s busy being a professional photographer!), so I’m turning to a couple of new Downtown Lunchers to pick up the slack.  The past few weeks you’ve been treated to Lunch’er Chris’ thoughts on baklava and street meat.  This week meet Lunch’er Kevin (from the blog Food Junta), who tracked down a decent bowl of generic deli “ramen”.

Café Water on the corner of Water and Pine looks like a run-of-the-mill deli in almost every way – hot bar, salad bar, Wall of a Thousand Beverages, etc. – but tucked away in the back corner is a Lunch’er’s dream: A made-to-order ramen soup bar. For $5.95 you get a steaming quart of ramen-y goodness that you think you won’t be able to finish.

Oh, but you’ll finish it. And an hour later you’ll find yourself slumped over your keyboard, comatose but happy. Good ramen from a deli? Believe it.

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking the week off again (he’s busy being a professional photographer!), so I asked Downtown Lunch’er Chris (who’s filled in a couple times over the past few weeks) to help us out once again.  Here’s his report…

Alfanoose, located at 8 Maiden Lane between Broadway and Nassau, has been on the Downtown Lunch radar for awhile now. A quick search of the website has showed it popping up every year for the last few years. Lunch’er Lara recommended it to profiled Lunch’er “Tam” back in 2007. It was mentioned in the comments of the 2008 Readers’ Poll for Best Falafel. And most recently, Daniel was honing in on the place after visiting the Country Kebab. Seems to me it’s high time we made this puppy an official Downtown Lunch.

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger is taking the week off again, so I asked Downtown Lunch’er Chris (who filled in two weeks ago) to help us out once again.  Here’s his report…

Months ago, one of my coworkers would not stop yapping about this street meat cart. It went missing for a few weeks and he maintained a strict schedule of lamentation every time lunch rolled around. “Oh how I wish the curry chicken cart was still here!” he’d moan. I found the prospect of a curry chicken cart rather dubious and told him as much. Maybe there was a cart that served chicken in something other than jerk or standard halal form up in Midtown, but certainly nothing like this existed in the Financial District. Did this keep him from his daily bitching? Hell no. I put up with that garbage for a month straight, and after that it was more a testament to my resolve not to seek out this curry cart (which had returned), just to spite him. Well, yesterday I broke down from my silent protest. I tracked down this curry cart to see if it was really worth all the anguish.

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