Midtown Lunch

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.)

Who doesn’t love having their noodles hand pulled? Wait… let me rephrase that. I love pulling my noodle! Shit wait, no that’s wrong again. For great hand pulled noodles check out Sheng Wang on Eldridge street (that’s better). I had lunch there after being told about it from the same friend who told me about Lan Zhou last summer, but she said that since discovering Sheng Wang, it’s her go-to HPNJ (hand pulled noodle joint).

Sheng Wang definitely has a better broth and I really loved the noodles. Everything comes to your table steaming hot, literal steam wafting in your face. I tried the bbq beef spare ribs soup but the beef seemed to be boiled. It didn’t have a sauce, or wasn’t grilled at all. I even double checked with the waitress and she said that it was indeed bbq spare ribs. Then what’s the regular spare ribs without “bbq” then? I don’t get it?

Anyway, semantics aside, it was good- and I of course had to get the fried egg for an extra 50c rounding the cost up to $5. For $3 you can get a huge plate of boiled dumplings which are worthy contenders in the heavily saturated dumpling district that is Chinatown.

The soups also have a single fishball in them which I’m not normally too keen on, but these were filled with pork and rocked. Seriously, that might have been my favorite part of the soup. Delicious!

Most soups are actually 4 bucks so you can get out of there with a soda for a 5 dollar lunch (or late night dinner). There’s no ambiance unless you like sitting next to men slurping soup and carnivorously devouring pork and beef bones next to you, but the price, the smell, and the sounds are what makes you love living in the city. Check it out.

Don’t want to take my word for it?  There’s another great write up on Serious Eats: New York as well.

Sheng Wang, 27 Eldridge St (north side of the Manhattan bridge, East of Canal St), 212-925-0805

Photos and post by Daniel Krieger