Midtown Lunch

I love seeing scrappy underdog restaurants pop up out of nowhere. Word-of-mouth publicity from readers of Midtown Lunch carries a lot more weight with me than slick advertising campaigns. So, yesterday, when we heard through the grapevine about a new (but slightly-out-of-bounds) restaurant that serves Southeast Asian street food, our interest was piqued. On paper and in concept, I was instantly sold – Thai inspired papaya salads, Malaysian satay skewers and roti’s and what’s that… a BANH MI? To borrow a quote from Anthony Bourdain, I would cheerfully “crawl naked across broken glass” for a good banh mi. It’s my absolute favorite food, ever.

I was so excited for the prospect of good Malay and Viet food, that I skipped a work happy hour (sorry co-workers that may be reading this) and voyaged over to 9th ave to get my banh mi fix. So do we finally have a bonafide banh mi in Midtown West?
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The best thing about restaurants in New York is that the turnover is high. Such a system lends itself to constant rebirths and many opportunities for us to try new restaurants. What is funny though is that sometimes you get restaurants that just change their name and all of a sudden the food is completely different? I present you restaurant 1 and restaurant 2 on Yelp. Different name. Different ratings. Exact same address and phone number. But at $8 for appetizer and entree as part of the lunch special, this really required some more investigation.

When I asked Zach about this place, he (surprisingly) got a bit excited.  Apparently Siam Inn was one of the first Thai restaurants he ate at when he moved to NYC, about 5 years ago, when they were on 8th Ave. btw. 51+52nd.  About 3 years ago they closed down and opened around the corner as Blue Chili, but the vibe went from homey to neon and glossy. The menu for the new spot says Siam Inn and the website for Blue Chili says it’s Siam Inn @ Bluechili. It’s confusing as hell really. But lets just get to the food because $8 lunch specials are what attracted me to this place in the beginning.

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Now that Downtown has its very own section of the site, what are we going to post on Fridays at 10am? Answer… how about a new column devoted to those lunches just south of the ML boundaries. Every week we’ll post about a lunch in Murray Hill south, Gramercy, Flatiron, and everything in between… or as we’ll call it from now on: Flatiron Lunch.

Thai food restaurants are few and far between in Midtown South. Up until a week or so ago, the only option I knew of near my office was Lemongrass Grill (on 34th btw. Lex+3rd). Every several months I end up there with co-workers and we all get the exact same dish we always get and then bathe it in the various sauces that are on hand and hope for something more interesting than usual (it rarely succeeds.)

Then, the other day, I spotted Taan Thai Cuisine. Actually, I spotted the signs for JoeyThai, presumably the previous restaurant in this spot. Apparently, no one thought it necessary to bother changing signs- but  I’m fine with that because the food is a vast improvement over the other Thai options in the area.
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Even though my palate is not well educated on Thai cuisine, I’ve so far come to realize that Thai food sort of falls into the same pattern as Chinese food. On one hand, you have more Americanized Thai specialties like pad thai and pad see ew (aka something you’d get at A+ Thai.) Then you’ll get restaurants that’ll do the less known, regional dishes like khao soi (if you’re craving that, Talent Thai is the way to go.) Obviously pad thai can be very authentic and traditional, but in Midtown we would all probably just settle for a fairly decent tasting dish. When I walked by Chai Thai, on 8th ave and 55th, I was intrigued because it was packed. With a $6.95 lunch special, I decided to try that and a couple of other things on the menu.

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I love Pad Thai and I’m always on the hunt for a tasty and filling version of the classic noodle dish. Hells Kitchen has no shortage of Thai restaurants, but only one of them got the two thumbs up from veteran Midtown Luncher, Talida of Talida Bakes. Talida’s parents are both from Thailand and I’ve seen her in action ordering dinner for a dozen food bloggers at Sriprapai, so when she told me that Olieng was her go to place for real Thai style Pad Thai, I had to give it a try.

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9th Ave. is just out of bounds for Midtown Lunch’ing purposes, but you know we’ll travel an extra avenue or two for the Northern Thai specialty khao soi!  And from the looks of it, the version at Pam Real Thai (on 49th btw. 9+10th) is the real deal!  Read all about it over on Food in Mouth>>

Related:
Talent Thai’s Khao Soi is the Bee’s Knees

A+ Thai is rolling out a $7.95 lunch today after opening over the weekend. Between 11:30 and 3:30, $7.95 gets you the entree only, but throw in another $2 if you want the appetizer-entree-drink combo. At first glance, menu items like the “Mega Ball dumplings” sound intriguing. Maybe we don’t need another pseudo-Southeast Asian place on the (far) East Side, but what we do need is a good one. Let us know how it is if you get there first.

Check out the lunch menu after the jump…

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It’s been a duck kind of a week. Yesterday I wrote about the Thursday duck pancake special at Yushi… and then subconsciously (or consciously) I felt a sudden urge to try the duck soup from Aura Thai. I’ve seen the soups at Aura mentioned a bunch of times on Midtown Lunch (most notably by Lunch’er “Nantini”) but the place is out of bounds (9th Ave. btw. 35+36th) and there are plenty of good soups in Midtown. We don’t need to be hiking out to 9th Ave. just for soup.

Now that I’ve tried the soup, though, I think hiking out to 9th Ave. is exactly what we all need to be doing (especially now that’s it starting to get colder.)

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Ever since visiting Thailand 2 1/2 years ago I’ve been borderline obsessed with khao soi, the soup-like curry noodle dish topped with pickled cabbage, shallots, lime, and deep-fried crispy egg noodles. Despite all the great Thai food we have in New York, khao soi (being a Chiang Mai specialty) isn’t as ubiquitous here in the states as your pad thai, pad see ew, or the standard curry dishes (red, green, massaman, etc.) According to this post in the forums Sripraphai (unsurprisingly) makes a good version at their restaurant in Queens (I haven’t tried it yet), and I had a decent (but hipster’ish) version at Thai Market on the UWS.

So when I heard last week that Talent Thai (on 34th btw. 2+3rd) specialized in Chiang Mai style dishes, like khao soi, I was pretty excited. And yesterday, I traveled that extra 25 feet outside the Midtown Lunch boundaries to check it out.

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I don’t know if this is a coincidence or not, but two days ago we were having a conversation in the ML forums about where to find good khao soi (a noodle dish that is popular in Chiang Mai, Thailand), and then yesterday I got an email about Talent Thai Kitchen- a newish Thai place on 34th btw. 2+3rd that specializes in “Northern Thai Noodle Soups… like khao soi.”  It’s technically outside the Midtown Lunch boundaries, but their lunch specials are only $7.95 and I will go an extra 1/2 an avenue to get my khao soi on. If it looks anything like the photo of khao soi after the jump, you will see a very happy Zach.

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