Midtown Lunch

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week we’ll post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap. For this week’s recommendation we’re back to Profiled Midtown Lunch’er Kate.

This one goes out to the commuters. Or the non-commuters who just like to hang around train stations, like me. Grand Central Station is a veritable treasure trove of deals for cheap drinks and tasty bites, if you’re willing to deal with the hustle and crowds. Gathered in its lower level are food stands that rep for some of the more notable restaurants New York has to offer, along with some of the most reasonable drink deals I’ve ever seen. So here I bring you my mini-tour of what Grand Central has to offer.

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If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week we’ll post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap. This week’s bar is Rudy’s, a Hell’s Kitchen establishment from Commenter Mamacita. It’s not as exciting as the strip club lunch she wrote about, but there are free hot dogs!

Opened in the 1930s and a neighborhood staple, Rudy’s Bar is probably one of my favorite bars in the city. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment seeing as how I pride myself on going to as many seedy gin-joints and dingy hole in the walls as possible. Rudy’s is a bit of a dive. It’s dimly lit and not so clean, and it lacks the pretense and affectation of so many cocktail bars around this city. This is a good thing. Most importantly, the bar has a freaking 6-foot smiling pig out front. Can there be a better mascot for us gluttons and freeloaders?

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If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site.  Every week we’ll post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap.  This week’s bar is Pocha, a Koreatown bar from Profiled Midtown Lunch’er Kate.  Not surprisingly the photos are kind of blurry…

I knew the first Midtown Lunch Happy Hour Post needed to be somewhere unusual- a hidden gem that perhaps was less familiar. As much as this post should be about value, it should also be about the unknown to a certain extent, right? After all, this site is about sidestepping typical Midtown- one of the best-trod sections of the world. If it included drinking out of a hollowed out fruit, even better!

My search led me to Koreatown, on the southern edge of the Midtown Lunch boundaries. I’ve been to a few bars around this area, yet none of them are as engaging as Pocha 32. A quick walk up one flight of steps leads you into the one room dive bar/eatery. The room is painted a forest green with fisherman’s nets and Christmas lights slung on all the walls and across the ceiling. On closer inspection the nets are heavily ornamented with pictures and mementos that customers have left from their visits. The nets on the ceiling are a constellation of soju caps… hundreds and hundreds of soju caps.

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At the end of this weeks Lunch’er profile I cast a net for a Midtown lush lunch’er who would be interested in starting a Friday afternoon “Midtown Happy Hour” column. We need cheap after work drinks too, right?  Well it looks like I found somebody, and the first column will go up next week (around this time.)  In the meantime, our friend Kayoko over at Umamimart posted about a great secret Russian happy hour spot in Midtown West.  Enjoy!