Midtown Lunch

Last Monday morning, while brainstorming potential lunchtime meals, I was hit with a sudden, intense craving for a calzone (pizza’s oft-forgotten, heavier sibling). This was no ordinary craving, either – it was the kind of craving that can haunt a person for days on end. For whatever reason, I knew that absolutely nothing would satisfy my lunchtime desires except for a calzone. The problem, of course, was that I had never ordered a calzone in midtown. It’s hard enough to find decent pizza in the neighborhood, so how the hell am I supposed to find a respectable calzone?

Naturally, I turned to our archives for help and stumbled upon this gem of a post from 2010. “Perfect,” I thought. Now I had five delectable options to choose from, each with a detailed description and photographic summary. Something was wrong, though… this was too easy. What kind of Midtown Lunch’er am I if I just stick to what’s already been explored? So, I made the difficult decision to forge ahead on a different path and test some new waters. Why should Midtown Lunch readers have to settle for just five calzones? We should familiarize ourselves with all of the calzones! And so began my weeklong quest to find the most worthwhile calzone in midtown.

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We haven’t been so great about covering the East side of Midtown lately, so we put out a call for new contributors a few weeks ago.  Luckily a ton of lunchers in Midtown East stepped up to the challenge, and you should notice us upping our eastside game in the come weeks.  To give you a little taste of what’s in store, here’s a report from Lunch’er Dan about a great Italian egg sandwich on 2nd Ave. 

Most pizza places feature dishes beyond the pies, and they almost always have a standard cast of hot heroes: the chicken parm, meatball, eggplant parm, and the rest. Sometimes you might even find peppers and eggs. They’ve got it at Pizza Rustica (2nd Ave. between 44th and 43th), but they also have a whole section of frittate (which the menu describes as omelettes on a roll), including potato and onion, smoked mozzarella, and spinach, tomato, and goat cheese. Being a fan of all things involving egg, cheese, and bread, I had to try one. And I was willing to walk one avenue outside of the ML boundaries to do it…

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