Midtown Lunch

About a week ago we told you that the Village Voice named Lan Sheng one of the best restaurants in New York. VV listed the Chongqing Braised Fish as a dish to try. So of course I took a gander at the menu and the $24 price tag stopped me dead in my tracks. It was just a tad bit out of the ML budget, even if one wants to splurge a little. Thankfully there was another dish on the signature items section of the menu that did stand out: Stewed Spareribs with Rice Powder (pretty much because it was the only signature item on the menu that’s less than $10!) Of course I had to get in on this action.

Read more »

Peter Cherches  hit up Lan Sheng the other day, and was so impressed he has dubbed 39th Street (btw. 5+6th) “Little Chengdu”.  He didn’t think their cumin lamb was as good as Szechuan Gourmet, or their Gui Zhou chicken was as good as Grand Sichuan. And his negative description of their dan dan nodles sounds nothing like the delicious version we wrote about back in January.  But he did think their duck was almost as good as Wu Liang Ye, and had loads of good things to say about their seafood.  Read his full review here>>

Related:
Lan Sheng’s Awesomeness Will Hopefully Force Szechuan Gourmet to Stay Good

When Lan Sheng first put up their sign up back in September (on 39th btw. 5+6th), I was pretty skeptical. Were these people crazy? Opening a Sichuan restaurant across the street from New York Times 2 starred Szechuan Gourmet seemed like suicide. How could they possibly match up? The regular menu had some tasty looking stuff on it, but their lunch specials seemed a bit Americanized in contrast to S.G.- which offers a good number of their best Sichuan specialties as lunch specials (twice cooked pork belly with chili and leeks I’m looking in your general direction…)

I suppose with S.G. packed every day for lunch they could hope for some spillover, but after trying out the place just before the New Year I think it’s safe to say they’re not hoping for spillover. They have the potential to be doing some major customer poaching from their rivals across the street.

Read more »

Over on Serious Eats: New York Joe DiStefano has filed the first report on Lan Sheng, the new Sichuan restaurant that recently opened on 39th btw. 5+6th (right across the street from Szechuan Gourmet.)  All the food he ate was part of a free “press dinner”, and much of it isn’t even on the menu yet, but hot damn the photos look tasty!  He also found out the chef trained in Chengdu, and the “number two” chef used to work at Wu Liang Ye.  As we reported last week, the lunch specials menu (which is what I’m most interested in) doesn’t really have too many Sichaun specialties on it, but the owners reassured me yesterday via email that they are working on a new menu that will be ready in a week.  And… “there will be a lot more Sichuan food on the lunch specials.”  Nice.

Related:
Lan Sheng Opens; Mangia Introduces New “Organic” Concept
New Sichuan Spot is Just One of Many Changes to 39th Street

39th Street btw. 5+6th is turning into one of the better lunch blocks in Midtown. Already home to Kati Roll, Szechuan Gourmet, Madeline’s Cafe, and Curry Dream, two new spots are now open for business: Lan Sheng and Mangia Organics. It will be tough for Lan Sheng to compete with Szechuan Gourmet, which is one of (if not the) best Chinese restaurant in Manhattan- and when we originally posted about it, they mentioned in the comments they were maybe going to add some of their Szechuan specialties to the lunch menu… but sadly the menu hasn’t changed. If anybody checks it out, let us know what you think. As a Chinese food addict, I’m still interested in trying it (naturally).

Mangia Organics on the other hand…

Read more »

39th Street btw. 5+6th has been a hot bed of activity over the past month.  Colbeh, an out of the ML price range Glatt Kosher restaurant, moved into much fancier digs across the street, there’s a new sushi restaurant open called Soi, and Szechuan Gourmet (on 39th btw. 5+6th) might have some new competition.  Lan Sheng, a new “Szechuan” restaurant, is set to open across the street from SG in the next week or two.  They are undoubtedly hoping to get some of the overflow from the always packed during lunchtime Szechuan Gourmet, and based on their menu it looks like the food could go either way…

Read more »