Midtown Lunch

Well, it looks like our days of defending Manganaro’s, and the two crazy sisters who run the place, are numbered.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the building that houses the 100+ year old Italian grocery store and restaurant is being sold, and once the deal goes through Manganaro’s will be no more.  We can take a little solace in knowing that Manganaro’s Hero Boy isn’t going anywhere, but anybody who has been to both knows there is little consolation in that.  Say what you want about the sisters, Manganaro’s is irreplaceable and will be missed. [via Eater]

Serious Eats: New York was (unsurprisingly) underwhelmed by a sandwich at Manganaro’s Hero Boy yesterday (on 9th Ave. btw. 37+38th), but our favorite part of the post was a comment by Midtown Lunch’er “exflexitarian” who asked “is this the restaurant where the FOH lady acts like she’s got sand in her vag? Or is it the other Manganaro’s?” Nice, dude.  But to answer your question, Hero Boy is not the one with the lady you’re thinking of. Manganaro’s Grosseria is the good one… you know… provided you don’t mind “the sand”.

Photo courtesy of Roboppy

Manganaro’s (along with its unaffiliated next door neighbor Manganaro’s Hero Boy) has been mentioned a few times on the site as a great place (on 9th Ave. btw 37+38th) to get an Italian sandwich. And even though it’s never been officially reviewed (it’s out of bounds, and a lot of things will cost you more than $10), I’ve always considered it an honorary Midtown Lunch. Which is why this post caught my eye on Fork New York, a long dormant blog run by Profiled Lunch’er “Andre Mika”. He resurrected his blog this week specifically to rant about the “bitches” who run the 100+ year old Manganaro’s Grosseria. The story is worth reading in its entirety, but is essentially summed up at the end with this:

“So I guess the moral of the story is, unless you love being abused and crapped on by people who you are trying to give your money to, stay away from Manganaro Grosseria Italiano.”

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