Midtown Lunch

I’m not sure if the New York Times cafeteria is back open after last week’s health scare, but Andrew Schnipper sent me an email last week wanting to make it clear that him and his brother would never take joy in the sickness of others. He also reiterated how excited they are to have the Shake Shack opening just 3 blocks away from their spot.

Hi Zach:

I hope you are well. I generally enjoy your blog and reading about your well thought out recommendations for midtown lunchers. I think you do a great job of discovering good values and interesting places for people to eat that they might not find on their own. However, I was disappointed [Thursday] regarding your comment that my brother and I would be “chest bumping” because we might get some extra business due to the fact that some people were made sick from a competitor. I can assure you we don’t ever want to see people get sick and certainly don’t want to benefit from it. Fortunately for us, business is great and we were busy [Thursday] as we usually are on a Thursday. And if we could help a neighbor and have prevented any food bourne illness, we would gladly do so. You clearly don’t know my brother and I well enough to think this would make us happy and I just wanted to set the record straight. I have no idea whether they have reopened the cafeteria, but let me be the first to tell you that I hope they did and that the employees who likely lost hours of pay yesterday will be back to work today.

But wait, there’s more.

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Remember back in May when Bobby Flay showed up at Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen (on 41st and 8th) for a sloppy joe throwdown?  Well the episode finally airs tonight at 9 PM EST on the Food Network, and to celebrate (or possibly redeem themselves?) Schnipper’s will be giving out free sloppy joe sliders during lunch time. Freeloaders, engage! [via Wined and Dined]

Related:
Bobby Flay Beats Schnipper’s in Sloppy Joe Throwdown
Schnipper’s May Have the Best Mac & Cheese in Midtown
Jamaican Dutchy to Help Bobby Flay Throwdown
Dessert Truck Bests Flay; Throwdown Blamed on the “Internet”

Photo courtesy of wonderlustforlife

Throwdown’s obsession with Midtown Lunch continues… via Twitter: “At Schnippers in midtown (on 8th Ave. and 41st) and they’re filming a Sloppy Joe Throwdown with Bobby Flay”  No word on whether or not Bobby Flay is actually throwing down with Schnipper’s (Dessert Truck Style), or getting help from Schnipper’s for a sloppy joe throwdown with somebody else (Jamaican Dutchy style.)  In related news, the falafel Throwdown with Taim, in which Flay gets help from Kwik Meal (on 45th and 6th), is airing tomorrow night (5/20) at 9:30pm EST.

UPDATE via Twitter: “Didn’t get a picture but Bobby Flay won. I got a vanilla milkshake so technically a win for me too!”  Guess it was an actual throwdown…

RELATED:
Schnipper’s May Have the Best Mac & Cheese in Midtown

Another review of Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen focuses on (what everybody agrees are) their mediocre burgers, but surprisingly Serious Eats’ Ed Levine had nicer things to say about them than the Mac & Cheese: “The mac and cheese ($6.99) was pretty standard and wholly unremarkable. The cheeses didn’t stand out and the bread crumbs couldn’t overcome the fact that the unbaked mac and cheese had no significant amount of crunch.” I agree that baked mac and cheese is preferable to unbaked, but sadly this “unremarkable” product is one the only decent versions in Midtown, for a reasonable lunchtime price.  (And I’d take unbaked mac & cheese over a burger they refuse to cook medium rare any day of the week.) [Serious Eats: New York]

Related:
Schnipper’s May Have the Best Mac & Cheese in Midtown

It’s funny how different people can view a restaurant in completely different ways.  Take Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen, the newly opened self serve diner in the New York Times Building (on 8th Ave. & 41st) opened by the original founders of Hale & Hearty Soup.  When Josh Ozersky, Profiled Midtown Lunch’er, burger expert, and editor of the Feedbag, went to Schnipper’s he saw a burger operation trying to be The Shake Shack. When I went to Schnipper’s I saw a fast food/diner concept, where burgers were just a small part of the operation (unlike the Shack, where they are all of the operation.) In fact, I completely ignored the burgers- and why wouldn’t I?  I knew that any place that serves a burger thicker than 1/4 inch, but forces you to get it cooked medium, was not going to replace any of my favorite burgers in Midtown.  So why bother trying it? 

Instead I zeroed in on the real heart and soul of the Schnipper’s menu.  The mac and cheese, and the sloppy joe. There are plenty of people who will go to Schnipper’s for the burgers, or the salads, or the hot dog, or the chicken sandwich.  But the real Midtown Lunchers know there are better and cheaper versions of all of those things to be found in Midtown.  What you can’t find anywhere else is Mac & Joe- the mac and cheese topped sloppy joe that I’ve been wanting to try at Schnipper’s since the first day I saw their menu. After failing on my first visit, I finally got a chance to try this monstrosity… and I wasn’t disappointed.

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Last friday I spotted the “Mac & Joe” creation at Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen, the new self service diner at the bottom of the New York Times Building, but didn’t get a photo because they ran out of sloppy joe before I got to the front of the line.  In my excitement for half mac and cheese/half sloppy joe, I completely missed the “Cheesy Joe” which, based on this photo uploaded to the Midtown Lunch Flickr Photo Pool by Ann Darsh, looks to be a sloppy joe sandwich, topped with cheese.  Considering that the mac and cheese looked to be more cheese than mac, I’m guessing this is pretty much the same as the mac & joe, just in sandwich form.  Either way it looks like a hot mess, in the best possible way, and has reinvigorated me to return to Schnipper’s ASAP to try it out.  You can read more about it on Darsh Eats.

Schnipper’s Quality Kitchen (on 41st and 8th Ave. in the NYT Building) is officially open, and it’s already pretty crowded. Early reports are mixed, and they seem pretty disorganized- but what do you expect on day one? Its only fair to give them a few weeks to work out the kinks.

Most importantly I spotted two ladies partaking in the sloppy joe/mac and cheese combo- and despite looking like brown slop topped with yellow slop in a paper container (no bread), they both said it was
really good! Also looked small for $7 but to be honest I’m not sure how much of this stuff the body could take anyway. Unfortunately by the time I got in line to order (around 1:30pm), they were sold out of Sloppy Joe!  Terrible.  I ended up going to Go Go Curry for their new fish special.

Anybody else sample the Schnipper’s today? Feel free to comment below.