Midtown Lunch

My hatred of the generic Midtown deli is no secret to anybody who reads this blog, but what may surprise you is that it has nothing to do with the concept. The concept is actually pretty great. Variety. Cheapness. Speed. Convenience. Did I mention variety? Plus, it has the “by the lb. buffet”, which to me is like cocaine you buy off a dealer you don’t really know: satisfying on so many different levels, but more expensive than you expected, and lord knows what ends up in it before it reaches your hands.

What I can’t stand about generic delis is the mediocre food. It can be explained in this easy to understand math formula:

A massive amount of office workers in a small space + laziness = Tons of Generic Midtown Delis with crappy food.

The incentive to make good food is gone when your customer base is built in. Put that same generic deli in a location where people will actually have to drag their asses a few blocks- and these businesses would inevitably fail. The owners of Indus Valley, a Zagat Rated (23) Indian Restaurant on 100th & Broadway, have set out to change all that by taking over half of the City Market Cafe on 48th St. btw. 5+6th, and replacing all the generic Midtown deli items, with Indian food. Instead of roast beef and mac & cheese, you get Chicken Tikka Masala & Saag Paneer. The soup station has been replaced with a samosa and pakora center, and possibly the biggest improvement, boring deli sandwiches, swapped out for kati rolls & naan wraps. It’s the kind of ingenuity you love to see in the Midtown Lunch’ing landscape, giving rise to a hybrid that could only exist here. The Generic Midtown Indian Deli.

What they’ve got, and whether or not it’s better than Minar, Kati Roll, the Chapati Roll Cart and Utsav, after the jump… Read more »

There is no shortage of generic delis here in Midtown, and we’ve got our decent share of fast and cheap Indian steam tables too.  Combine the two, and then you’re talking craziness!  Walk into what used to be City Market Cafe on 48th btw. 5+6th, and you will find the latest in worktime lunch’ing ingenuity.  Keep the set-up, change the food seems to be the motif at the newly christened Indus Express, the latest cheap, fast food Indian place to open in Midtown.  I haven’t tried anything yet, but early word from a tipster is that the saag paneer is “pretty good”.

They don’t have printed menus yet, so I don’t know exactly what the scope of their offerings will be or how much everything will cost, but they did have a list of basic steam table pricing.  $7.95 gets you two veggies, dal, rice & bread,  $8.95 gets you one meat, two veggies, bread (and I’m assuming rice, although it doesn’t say it),  $9.95 gets you two meats, two veggies, (rice), and bread,  and $10.95 gets you fish with two veggies, and bread. 

They also have a steam table full of nice looking pakoras and samosas.  

But a steam table alone will not pull lunch’ers away from already established Midtown Indian food favorites.  For that, Indus Express is bringing out the big guns, which I have photos of, after the jump… Read more »