Midtown Lunch

The blog Hungry Travels points out the horribly amazing logo of the Oriental Noodle Shop on 45th btw. Lex+3rd.

I’m waiting for the P.C. police to come storming in and shut the place down. That’d be a shame, because if you ignore the mildly offensive logo and name, you can get tasty noodle dishes and noodle soups here at reasonable prices, especially for midtown (lunch will run about $7-$10). I especially like the thick, almost chewy texture of their pan fried noodles.

After last weeks (still going in the comments) debate about the Trini Paki Boys Cart (on 43rd & 6th) I shudder to think of what people are going to say about this.

I’ve never really met a bubble tea I didn’t like.  I’ve heard rumors of bad bubble teas;  gross powder mixtures, hard tapioca pearls, etc.  But I don’t think I’ve ever had one. There are varying degrees of good and great, but never terrible… until yesterday when I stopped at Grand Sichuan on Lex. btw. 33rd+34th.  Just inside the ML boundaries, it’s unclear whether there is a relation to the famous chain of Grand Sichuan’s (I’m inclined to say no.)  Either way, I thought I’d be safe getting one of their bubble teas.  And that’s when my streak ended.   The tapioca pearls were rock hard in the middle, dry, and they had a strong taste of prunes or raisins or something.  Disgusting.  2 sips later I threw it away, a once in a lifetime occurance (being fat *and* cheap means I never throw away food.)  I don’t normally write about stuff like this, but it was so bad I don’t want anyone to make the same mistake I did.

However, I will be back for one of their lunch specials. $6.25 and it comes with soup, egg roll, or soda.  Not bad at all. So cheap, and I’m sure their double cooked pork or Ma Po Tofu is better than their bubble tea.  Anybody been before?  Thoughts?

Grand Sichuan NY, 227 Lexington Ave. (btw. 33+34th) 212-679-9770

I am a big fan of the 2:15 lunch special at Sun Yip (formerly Ho Yip).  I can’t usually wait that long for lunch, but on the days I can- it’s a nice treat.  Basically after 2:15 they discount their steam table to $4.29/lb. (it used to be $3.75, but what are you gonna do).  This is a pretty big deal, considering that most by the pound buffets are at least $6 a pound, and most of the good ones are even more.  Usually I go right at 2:15, when the buffet is still full (they usually do one major refill just after 2pm) but the other day, I happened to be walking by at 3pm and saw a pretty pathetic sight. 

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After Frank Bruni awarded Szechuan Gourmet 2 stars in yesterday’s New York Times, I panicked. Of course I was excited for the place, but a lot of that excitement merely served to hide an underlying fear. I will never be able to eat lunch in Szechuan Gourmet again. And even if I could get in, would it still be the same? Doesn’t Wu Liang Ye (on 48th btw. 5+6th) and all the rest of the Midtown Chinese dinosaurs have New York Times articles in their windows? And look at them now. Not terrible, but shells of their former selves. Granted, those articles were from 1984, but who’s counting.

With all this in mind we rushed over to Grand Szechuan for lunch yesterday, mere hours from the time that Bruni’s accolades were made public, super curious over what we would find. Pandemonium? Sub par food from a cocky overwhelmed kitchen? Mass hysteria? As I walked up 39th St. I noticed a few people with dejected looks on their faces carrying take out menus back to their office. Not a good sign. Read more »

In the past two months alone, the New York Times has discovered numerous Midtown Lunch’ing favorites.  There was the Treats Truck piece, and the mention of the Jamaican Dutchy cart, plus the under $25 review of Sophie’s Cuban.  But this… this is much much bigger.  Midtown Lunch’ers have know about Szechuan Gourmet, on 39th btw. 5+6th, for awhile, but now the secret is officially out.  Frank Bruni awarded the Chinese restaurant 2 stars in this mornings New York Times.  Not a fun little piece about our favorite sit down Chinese restaurant in Midtown.  Not even an under $25 review (amazingly lunch is still under $10).  A full fledged, rate it like you’re eating at Le Bernardin, New York Times review.   Two mother-fucking stars. That is some crazy shit.  A Midtown Lunch people!   

Back in March I wrote about how much of a madhouse the place had become during lunch.  I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like now.  As long as the lunch menu stays under $10 I’m not gonna be mad…

Related:
The Best Chinese Food Dishes in Midtown… As Picked by You
The Most Offal Lunches Midtown Has to Offer

One of my favorite (in theory) lunch places, that I don’t get to nearly enough, is the Lunch Box Buffet on 34th St. btw. 7+8th.  It’s been mentioned a few times in the comments, and I just never have gotten around to writing about it.  A fairly simple concept, it combines two of my favorite things- value and cheap chinese food.  5 items for $5.  How does it get any better than that?  Well, I’ll tell you how:  they’ve added a Fay Da Bakery to the front of the location.

Lunch Box Buffet isn’t necessarily the best cheap chinese food in the area, but it has got the largest selection, the best pricing concept (especially for variety), and it’s much less intimidating than the far more adventurous Ying Du (on 38th btw. 7+8th.)  All the food is labeled, and the’ve got plenty of non-chinese items, like the very popular fried chicken.  Now with the addition of Fay Da it becomes much easier to ignore the cheapness of the Chinese food… you can always follow it up with a delicious custard bun.   Read more »

Awhile back I posted a “Where to get Bubble Tea” Ask Midtown Lunch post, which yielded a few responses: Dishes (which is supposedly terrible) and Hing Won on 48th btw. 5+6th, which is not that bad. You can get in Koreatown on 32nd btw. B’way and 5th, but for those of us working in the heart of Midtown Lunch, there’s not much. I did however noticed the other day that Ying Du on 38th btw. 7+8th (formerly the 38th St. Restaurant and Bakery) is now serving bubble tea. For $2.50 you get a decent size cup, and the regular black tea version I had was pretty darn good (especially in the ridiculous heat,) and definitely better than Hing Won.

If you’re heading over to Go Go Curry today for your 3 free toppings coupons, you might want to check it out- it’s right next door.  Anybody else have a bubble tea suggestion?  Feel free to put it in the comments below…

I was so excited by the description of Shih Lee offered up by Profiled: Midtown Luncher “Kayoko” I asked her to join the slowly growing list of Midtown Lunch contributors, to write about the good places to eat in the out of bounds reaches of Midtown East (she works on 1st Ave. over by the U.N. building.  Kayoko has her own most excellent blog http://umamimart.blogspot.com/ but has agreed to pop over here every once in awhile to make everyone in Midtown proper (and now Donwtown) a little jealous every once in awhile.

To call where I work, off of 1st Ave near the UN building, “Out of Bounds” Midtown is an understatement. A TEN minute walk from Grand Central, just trying to navigate through the hoards of frantic workers and tourists in the station easily takes a few minutes every morning. Oh, the price we pay to work in the glorious east side of Manhattan’s Midtown.  And of course, as with all Midtown workerbees, there’s the great Midtown Lunch dilemma! My goal here is to try to make all you Midtown West and Downtown people wish you worked on the outskirts of the east side. WOOT! Let’s see if I could possibly top the bulgogi cart, or the banh mi jewelry shop (JEALOUS!) with Shih Lee, my personal favorite, at least one a week, East side lunch.  Read more »

I have a secret relationship with General Tso’s Chicken. Maybe secret isn’t the best word for it. Love/Hate? Nah… that doesn’t really do it either. Hate is not a word I would ever use to describe my feelings toward any kind of Chinese food (even the most Americanized dishes.) So maybe it’s an affair. I know it’s bad for me. I know it’s an American invention. I know much better food can be had in Flushing or Manhattan’s Chinatown, or on Sunday mornings in a Dim Sum house (my other Chinese food addiction). But there is a special place in my heart for the General. (Tso or Gau, it doesn’t really make a difference to me.)

My addiction started in college, when General Tso’s Chicken from Golden Light in Somerville, MA (go Jumbos!) became my go to second dinner. If you never went to college, second dinner is the meal you eat around one in the morning, a full 6-7 hours after eating “dinner” in the dining hall, thereby making it a totally acceptable 4th meal of the day (3rd for those of us who didn’t wake up until Noon.) That is where it started. It ended about halfway through my sophomore year, when I had to go to the hospital one day with horrible stomach pains that would not go away. My friends joked that maybe eating General Tso’s chicken every single night at 1am for over a month isn’t such a good idea. Ok… so maybe they weren’t “joking”, although in the General’s defense, it only allegedly put me in the hospital. It was never proven. It’s not like when I was admitted, the Doctor looked at my chart and said, “This is clearly a case of eating cheap Chinese food every night for an entire month!” So we don’t really know for a fact that it was the Chinese food. We can only speculate. And quite frankly, it could have been anything giving me those horrible stomach pains, which thankfully ended up going away on their own.

Needless to say, I cut back (slightly) on the General Tso’s after that. But I still love it, and although I eat only eat in sparingly now, the craving does come up every so often for those crispy chunks of chicken, covered in spicy, sweet, gooey sauce. So when I saw Lawrence (aka Superman, aka NYCFoodGuy) write that the best General Tso’s chicken in Midtown West is at China Gourmet on 8th Ave. btw. 52+53rd, I knew my mission was clear: use his post as an excuse to eat General Tso’s chicken. Read more »