Midtown Lunch

I completely dropped the ball on this one (thanks to Apikoros for pointing it out in the forums), and completely neglected one of the more interesting parts of last week’s New York Magazine’s Cheap Eats issue: their online only list of 82 Most Notable Hamburgers in New York City. I counted 12 of them in Midtown (although admittedly there may have been more): Bar Americain, Beacon, Burger Joint, Carnegie John’s, City Burger, DB Bistro Moderne, Five Guys, Flip, Good Burger, La Cense Burger Truck, Pop Burger, and Prime Burger.  Props to NYMag for including Carnegie John’s, but La Cense?  Too soon my friends.  Too soon.  See the complete list here>>

Related:
Burger Joint Offers Early Bird Special Thru Thursday

I fully admit that my Midtown Lunch pricing rules have always been a little vague. Under $10 is the rule, but does that mean with or without tax? Does it have to include a drink? And how much food do you have to get for your $10? The answer to all those questions is… uh… maybe? The truth is, it’s all about feel. You could easily spend over $10 at many of the places that are written about on this site, and there are places I refuse to write about that have items under $10. Sometimes it just comes down to instinct.

My original instinct about HB Burger, the newish Heartland Brewery owned burger spot on 43rd btw. B’way+6th, was thumbs down. Even though their burgers are well under $10 (in fact, they boast that everything on their menu is less than $9), it is a sit down restaurant where a burger *and* fries will cost you well over $10. I will occasionally write about sit down restaurants on ML, but the bar is much higher for those places, and the ideal Midtown Lunch spot is a place where take out is the norm or they have a free seating area for once you get your food at a counter. Heartland Brewery (and by transitive property HB Burger) is not one of those places. In fact, it’s the kind of place this blog was created to combat: the slightly-overpriced-for-what-you-get, tourist magnet, that might also appeal to the type of Midtown worker who doesn’t want to walk the extra few blocks for something more interesting.

But in the end taste and price can go along way to help me ignore a bunch of tourists, so when HB Burger decided to offer that $9.95 Midtown Lunch special for one this week only– I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try. It’s only fair.

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Following in the footsteps of Time Out New York’s Feed Blog…  Thrillist, Citysearch’s The Feedbag, and New York Magazine have all filed reports about this new La Cense Burger Truck coming to Midtown sometime in the next week later in the month.  With all this PR, I’m starting to wonder if this truck is about bringing tasty burgers to Midtown Lunchers or about raising brand awareness for La Cense’s Montana bred beef (after all, NYC is the biggest food media city in the country.) We’ll wait to see if they park outside of Conde Nast before issuing judgment.

A few other important tidbits of important info I didn’t mention in the first post… the burgers will be made entirely from grass fed beef, and will be served topped with carmelized onions on a sesame seed bun for $7. And if you were wondering exactly what Adam Perry Lang’s (from Daisy May’s BBQ) role in all of this is, he created the burger recipe and the method of preperation.  It definitely could be good…

If you don’t mind spending over $10 for a quality steakhouse burger for lunch (or reading about the lengths PR people will go to get publicity) you’ll love this one. A few weeks ago, Benjamin Steakhouse (on 41st btw. Park+Madison) offered bloggers the chance to come in and try their burger side by side with the burgers of their competitors (picked up and delivered by Benjamin Steakhouse, of course.)  Well, three blogs took them up on the offer, and the results are in.  Blackbook was the first to weigh in, allowing the Benjamin Steakhouse PR people to deliver all the burgers to their office.  The winner: one person chose the BLT Burger as the best, the other four… Benjamin Steakhouse!

Josh “Mr Cutlets” Ozersky, from the Feedbag, chose Wolfgang’s as the best, but very nicely explained that Benjamin Steakhouse only lost because it wasn’t cooked medium rare. Finally our good friends over at Wined and Dined, who seem to relish promoting these little PR things- between eating Walgreens Sandwiches and greek salads from the 100% Halal & Healthy cart, also had nothing but nice things to say about the Benjamin Steakhouse burger. The whole thing wasn’t without some controversy (aside from the fact that the challenge was orchestrated entirely by the Benjamin Steakhouse PR team.)  Commenters on the Feedbag seemed to think that Mr. Cutlets might have mistakenly thought the BLT Burger was the Benjamin Steakhouse burger!  Not so says the Feedbag… they just didn’t label the photo properly on the post. Way to try and poke holes in the one post that didn’t choose Benjamin’s Steakhouse.

Here’s an idea… rather than spend all this money on PR people, and free burgers for bloggers- why doesn’t Benjamin Steakhouse offer an under $10 lunch special for the good people of Midtown!  That, we could all totally get behind…

Related:
Benjamin Steakhouse Doesn’t Quite Get “Midtown Lunch”
A.J. Maxwell’s Gives You Good Steak for $10

Photo courtesy of The Feedbag

I have nobody to blame for this but myself.  Do I think Goodburger has the best combo meal in the city?  Obviously not… but I did post those words on the site (unsurprisingly they didn’t care that it was a half-sarcastic attempt to get Midtown Lunch on their wall of fame.)  Of course they left out the “if only it was cheaper” part, a crucial impediment to fully enjoying Goodburger.  And, the quote is completely misleading now- because at the time I wrote it, it was meant to be kind of a joke- since they were the *only* burger place to offer combo meals in Midtown.  (Since I wrote that, City Burger has appeared with combo meals eerily similar to Goodburger, but Burger Joint and Five Guys still don’t offer them.)

Oh well.  You live and learn.  Now I’m immortalized on their wall as saying something nobody would agree with. (At least I am in good company.)  Awesome.  Well, as long as I’m here I might as well try their Steak & Egg Burger- which was just reintroduced to the menu as a lunchtime item (and an official entry in the Midtown Lunch Sandwich Challenge.)

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The rumor I reported last week has now been confirmed via Twitter, and re-confirmed on their website:  The “Steak and Egg” burger has been restored to the menu at all Goodburger locations starting today.  When I originally launched the Midtown Lunch Sandwich Challenge back in January, I told restaurants they could pretty much do whatever they wanted… but I did have a few special requests.  First was that somebody do a grease truck sandwich, and second was that Goodburger bring back their formerly breakfast only “Steak & Egg” burger, featuring a burger topped with home fries and a fried egg.  See, Goodburger used to serve breakfast- but when they stopped doing that, the “Steak & Egg” went away.

Nobody has answered the call for a grease truck sandwich- but Goodburger has finally listened to the pleading from the Midtown Lunchers, and brought back the “Steak & Egg”!  Do you want to see it? (Of course you do…)

Steak and egg porn is after the jump…

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In what would be considered a huge upset by many Josh Ozersky, the just out of bounds Five Napkin Burger (on 9th Ave. btw. 44+45th) won the Reader Choice award for “Best New Hamburger” at the Time Out New York Eat Out Awards last night. The other nominees were Black Iron Burger, Petey’s, and Midtown’s own City Burger (on 39th & B’way)

Related:
Original City Burger Better Than Black Label? Combo Comes Down By $1

In a lot of ways steak is like sushi.  You can find it cheap, but if you want the good stuff you’re going to have to shell out the cash.  It’s tough to get good versions of both for under $10 in Midtown, but at least in the steak category there have been a few exceptions.  Surprising everybody, my trip to Tad’s Steak brought me a lot of joy– but clearly the best option is when a nice steakhouse offers up some sort of special.  The Del Frisco’s bar menu loophole was the best by far, but as soon as Midtown Lunch’ers got on that, they raised the price from $9.99 to an understandable, but out of the ML price range, $11.95 $12.95.

Well, with a recession comes the recession specials… and A.J. Maxwell’s (on 49th btw. 5+6th) has created a take-out-only lunch special for those of us who’d like to enjoy a steak sandwich made with quality steak (or mini burgers, or a chicken sandwich) for just $10.  You get your choice of any one of the three, plus a soup or salad, for $10.

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