Midtown Lunch

This year’s Choice Eats event was announced a few weeks ago and tickets have been going fast for the annual food feast on Tuesday, March 19 at the 69th Armory on Lexington (bw 25th and 26th). With only one official Midtown entry (Black Shack Burger), this might be a perfect chance to sample some exciting restaurants from all over the city.  And we have a  pair of tickets to give away to one lucky reader. The full list of participating restaurants are listed here. In order to enter, simply leave a comment below letting us know which food establishment you are most eager to try at the event. We’ll choose the winner by random on Friday Feb. 15th at 5pm EST. Don’t want to leave it to chance? General Admission tickets are still available for $50 and can be purchased here.

We’ve never made it a secret that Village Voice’s Choice Eats is one of our favorite food events of the year. Midtown isn’t always well represented, but the places that are invited are almost always Midtown Lunch’ish- making it a must attend event. Tickets for this year’s event (which is happening on March 19th at the 69th St. Armory) go on sale to the general public next Wednesday, but you can get a special pre-sale code for early tickets by signing up for the Village Voice Insider or Dining SMS alerts. Thanks to lunch’er Mitch for the heads up.

Choice Streets, the food truck version of Village Voice’s Choice Eats happened on Pier 86 just below the Intrepid last night and I was happily there to check out all the goods.

Usually at these food truck affairs, it’s always the same trucks over and over again. But I was pleased to see some new offerings aside the expected Wafels & Dinges, Frites ‘n’ Meats, and Red Hook Lobster Truck. Quite a few vendors who very rarely make the trip to Midtown proper showed face. Solber Pupusas and Souvlaki GR served up their Vendy Award winning deliciousness.
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Choice Eats, the Village Voice’s annual tasting event which takes place next week, is unfortunately sold out. The good news is that tickets just went on sale for Choice Streets. This is an extension of the main event (although it’s one month later) and is a tasting from over 20 food trucks, including Midtown favorites like Korilla BBQ and Wafels & Dinges in addition to ones that don’t often come to this neck of the woods, like Kelvin Natural Slush and Souvlaki GR. The event takes place on Tuesday, April 24 from 7-10pm on Pier 86. Tickets are $30 for general admission and include all the food, beverages, and entertainment. You can purchase them here.

Some of the details for Village Voice’s Choice Eats (one of our favorite events of the year) have been announced and it looks like this year’s event is going to be a good one. Tickets don’t go on sale for another week, and only a few restaurants have been announced, but they’re going to have four food trucks all of which are Midtown Lunch faves (Joyride, Wafels & Dinges, Korilla BBQ and Taim Mobile.) Plus, there’s a special badge for Four Square users that will score you free stuff at the event. All you have to do is check in from 5 restaurants that have been or are going to be part of Choice Eats, and you score the badge (for Midtown that includes the food trucks listed above and Margon.) Tickets go on sale Wednesday, January 26th. Get all the details on their website.

To make up for their 10 Worst Things to Eat in Times Square list from a few week ago, Robert Sietsema- food critic for the Village Voice- put out his 10 Best Things to Eat in Times Square list today- and with few exceptions it’s basically just a list of Midtown Lunch’s Greatest Hits. He completely ignored the fancy restaurants of Midtown, choosing instead to highlight such under $10 ML classics as Tad’s Steak (see, I’m not crazy for liking it!), Teriyaki Boy, Cafe Edison, Kim’s Aunt Kitchen Cart, Margon, and Sapporo.  The only real shocker of the list is their boundaries, which went as far west as 9th Ave (Gazala Place) and as far north as 56th (Szechuan Gourmet) and yet didn’t include an Honorable Mentions list- even though with those boundaries you clearly could have listed a ton more places.  Like Madeleine the Crepe Lady, who actually has a legit claim to be called “in Times Square”.  It also included Kim’s Aunt Kitchen Cart, but not the Biriyani Cart- which is about a 100 yards closer to Times Square. Go figure.

As with any list like this, it’s easy to pick it apart or make our own (better) suggestions… but in the end, Fork in the Road got what they wanted.  All of you guys to click over and read it!

Ouch! We heard Famous Dave’s BBQ (on 47th btw. 6+7th) was hit or miss when it first opened– but worse than the by the pound buffet at Smiler’s!?! Come on! Fork in the Road has released their weekly top 10 list and today it shines a spotlight on the 10 Worst Things to Eat in Times Square. Seeing as how Midtown Lunch is devoted to finding the best food around Times Square (and beyond) we’re proud to say we haven’t tried a single one of the ten things.

It’s a familiar story at this point: Another year, another Choice Eats that sadly neglects the restaurants of midtown. This was my first year attending and I was honestly surprised at how few Midtown offerings there were. In past years, Margon flew the flag for the underrepresented, but this year, the only restaurant to fall within Midtown Lunch boundaries was Toloache, with just out of bounds Xie Xie and Mantou Chinese Sandwiches rounding out the Midtown selections.

It was disappointing from a Midtown Lunch’ing standpoint, but there was plenty of other deliciousness to stuff my face with. After the jump, some of my favorites.

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Fork in the Road released their 10 Best Sandwiches in New York list, and unsurprisingly none of them are in Midtown.  But we did score two in the “runners up” list: ‘wichcraft’s white anchovy, soft-cooked egg, salsa verde, and frisee (whatever, it’s a chain), and Virgil’s Owensboro lamb sandwich (on 44th btw. B’way+6th). At $14 the lamb sandwich is way out of the ML price range, but call us intrigued. Anybody had this thing yet? And would you chose it over the Sophie’s Cuban fried pork and plantains sandwich? And what about all of Certe’s Sandwiches (on 55th btw. 5+6th)? Or Ma Peche’s pork banh mi? What Midtown sandwich do you think should have been on the list? Or were they right in snubbing us…

Related:
The Midtown Lunch Sandwich Challenge

The Village Voice seems to be in Midtown a lot these days… on Tuesday Robert Sietsema posted a not terrible review of Oaxaca Grill (even though “there’s zero Oaxacan about the menu”), and in yesterday’s issue of the paper Sarah DiGregorio reviewed the newly opened Izakaya Moku on 32nd btw. B’way+5th.  From her review you don’t really get a sense of what the place might be like for lunch, but it sounds like the food is pretty good.

Related:
Izakaya Moku Continues the Japanification of Koreatown
First Look: Oaxaca Mexican Grill (A More Americanized Chipotle!?)