Downtown Lunch: A Sea World That Would Fry Shamu if They Could
Midtown workers shouldn’t have all the fun, so to even the score, I’ve brought on Daniel Krieger as an official Downtown Lunch Correspondent to write up some of the tasty stuff you can get in the lower half of Manhattan. He’s a great photographer (ensuring good food porn), but more importantly he is a lover of cheap, unique and delicious eats (or as I like to call it- Midtown Lunch’ish food.) Everyone knows how much I love fried food, and this week Daniel has found a fried food palace…
At the amusingly named Sea World, located on the corner of Church and Lispenard, there are only 26 items on the take out menu and the word “fried” appears 27 times. How is that possible? Well, take item #23. Order that and you get FRIED squid, FRIED shrimp, FRIED rice. That’s alotta fried.
Sounds good to me though… and after Zach was robbed of his weekly grease intake a few days ago when lunching at Empanada Joe’s, I wanted to let him live vicariously through me today.
“Is there anything on your menu that isn’t fried?” I asked. “The bread” answered the manager, pointing to a loaf of grocery store sliced bread, which is used to make fried fish sandwiches. I asked if she could fry the bread if I wanted it, to which she answered an apologetic “no”. I guess you have to lay the sarcasm on a little thicker at Sea World.
On this day I sampled the fried shrimp platter. The portions are pretty generous and they fry your food to order, so it comes out piping hot.
The shrimp is a bit bland but some hot sauce or tarter sauce will help revive it. I wish they added some old bay seasoning to either the fries or the batter for the fish… something to bring a bit more life into the meal. But considering that the shrimp and fries platter is $5.95 and the basic fish and chips (they use whiting) is $5.50, you can’t really beat the deal.
The scene of eaters is a blend of Chinatown locals, Canal street tourists on break from buying fake Gucci bags plus the guys selling the bags….nice how it all works together in NYC sometimes.
So next time you want to eat like a whale go to Sea World.. just don’t expect to find a salad on the menu. I may need to make up for this post by doing a healthier post next week…I promise!
Sea World, 321 Church Street (btw. Lispenard+Canal), 212-925-4790
Photos and post by Daniel Krieger
Posted by Daniel Krieger at 9:42 am, September 26th, 2008 under Sea World, Seafood, Tribeca.
20 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
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20 Comments
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or fried Shamu?
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Shamu is michael Phelps’ Dad.
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Daniel, with all due respect Sea World blows donkey dick.
Kinda like CockChug
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I don’t know wayne, it’s deep fried, there’s hot sauce, what’s not too like?
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Dayyyymmmm Mamacita, you a cheap date
Hmmmm… Midtown Lunch seems to have some kind of wonderful, magical hypnotic power that makes women drop their standards to the gutter and below. I may have to start using it on women instead of alcohol
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Fried Flipper?
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Mamacita: If you want deep-fried fish with hot sauce, just hit up Kim’s Aunt’s Kitchen on 46th between 5th and 6th. They don’t have anything exotic, unless you consider the whiting is only $3.50.
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more exotic things I guess would be crab and squid..but I think the majority of people get fried fish, shrimp, or chicken there..
Wayne – it really doesn’t blow…it’s not the best fried fish in NYC but it’s the only place like that has fish-n-chips within a wide radius downtown, and pretty cheap to boot.
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Fish & Chips HAVE to fried in beef dripping.
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“Midtown Lunch seems to have some kind of wonderful, magical hypnotic power that makes women drop their standards to the gutter and below”
Dude, did you think I was here for the vegan chatter and DocChuck abuse?
Profile’d MLers is the misanthrope’s eHarmony.
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Bossman, during these uncertain economic days the Tuesday Freak is the one constant MT lunchers can draw upon to re-asure themselves they’re actually doing ok.
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On the topic of seafood, I ate the mexican woman’s granny-cart fish soup today. It was a little on the cool side, but after I warmed it up it went down easy.
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I didn’t just say that . . .
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I welcome you to my My Space page where I have posted photographs of our real estate holdings, as well as my musings on topics of interest to me.
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I know this place! This is right by the old AT&T building near Canal. I walked in once and looked at the menu of fried things and fried things and even more fried things and realized I probably couldn’t handle a 3 pm fried-food induced coma that day. Maybe I’ll try it soon enough.
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I might be a bit biased but everyone should forget this place and try out the place next door called 35. Thai cuisine. It doesn’t exactly qualify for Midtown lunch though! ha
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I know this place as well. I go every so often when I’m on Canal and I don’t feel like walking to Grand St. Pretty good prices I must say.
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Daniel – not sure what that wide radius is but I can think of two places with good fried foods. One is a takeout counter behind the Goldman Sachs building at 85 Broad, I think it’s called Terrace Fish-n-Chips, and they have both fried whiting and flounder, they also have “salads” to make you feel healthy (I think it’s just shredded lettuce and tomato slices though) and possibly rice as an alternative to fries. They have scallops, whiting or flounder (flounder is more exp by 50c?), possibly salmon, shrimp, crab, hmm, what else, it’s been a long time since I went there because I don’t feel so hot when I eat that much deep fried foods. It’s priced similarly to the above place though and is quite tasty.
Or if you want a slightly … well, it has seating and beer (maybe hard alcohol?), Jeremy’s Ale House by Seaport is a good bet as well (I’ll be posting on that sometime eventually). -
Is it just me or the batter shreds the insides of your mouth after you eat?
Is there any place that serves soft batter?
Any weird or unique fried items. Do they have squid or mussels?
BTW… Soooo hungry now!!!