Midtown Lunch

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, Dan is looking for a new lunch spot to escape his “boring” daytime existence and fantasizes about a life of tapas and siestas…

Name: Dan

Age: The big 3-0

Occupation: Boring banking account administrator

Where do you work?: Barclay and Greenwich

Favorite Kind of Food: Pizza.  Sushi.  Filet mignon.  BBQ.  Street food.  Anything with bacon and/or garlic.  Things I can eat with my hands/fingers, or off a skewer.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Processed foods, fast food.

Favorite Lunch(es) Downtown: Portobello’s Pizza (83 Murray St.), Sophie’s Cuban (for the cheap empanadas, at 96 Chambers St.), a couple sushi places around. Read more »

In his profile a couple weeks ago, Lunch’er Corey asked the community where he could find “a nice big bowl of rice cakes.” Monstermooch suggested Shanghai Cafe, so on the gorgeous Good Friday we had last week, I set out to follow up on the tip.

I’m happy to report that while Shanghai Cafe’s rice cakes come on a plate and not in a bowl, they’re definitely nice and it’s certainly a big plate. The soup dumplings are terrific as well, so I’d urge Corey and the rest of you to head down there yourselves as soon as you get the chance. Ogle the goodness that awaits you after the jump.

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Fried Bacon-wrapped Shrimp with Pringles and Mayonnaise at Golden Unicorn, courtesy of Blondie and Brownie.

• Blondie and Brownie go shrimp-crazy at Golden Unicorn. [Blondie and Brownie]
• Bionic Bites was there too, though she went slightly less shrimp-crazy. [Bionic Bites]
• Meanwhile, Lunch with Front Studio loaded up on eggplant and greens at Central Buffet. [Lunch with Front Studio]
• Plaintains and Kimchi offers their take on the downtown Korean trifecta of Seh Ja Meh, Soma by Nature, and Cafe Hanover. [Plaintains and Kimchi]
• If none of the real estate options I presented this morning appeal to enterprising restaurateurs, maybe this fancy schmancy Battery Park kiosk will. [Eater]
• You can now purchase tickets for Taste of Tribeca, provided you can withstand the disorienting visual assault of their website. [Taste of Tribeca]
• And as always, Locanda Verde’s got your sweet tooth covered, this time with a lemon-fennel muffin. [Serious Eats]

Eater reports that Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches is opening a new location “on Nassau and Ann Streets.” I wanted to be the first to bring you pictures of the new location, so I trotted right over to find me some plywood.

I found some alright. More than I knew what to do with. Just within one block of that intersection, I found fourteen available retail spaces. A few are clearly not restaurant spaces, but most could work for a downtown outpost for a city stalwart like Nicky’s. You hear that restaurateurs? The FiDi is ripe for annexation. We’re here and we’re hungry, so get down here pronto.

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We take recommendations very seriously here. So when Lunch’er brownbaglunch commented on my write-up of Ruchi and recommended Bangal Curry on Church Street as a good Indian alternative, I was excited to try it as soon as I could get over there. I wasn’t disappointed.

Thank you, brownbaglunch. I haven’t had much chance yet to give Church Street the exploration it deserves, but I was happy to start with such a winner. The food at Bangal Curry is very good, and you get a ton of it for $5. I’m tempted to end this post right there because, really, what else does a Midtown Lunch’er need to see?

Mouthwatering photos, that’s what. You’ll find plenty of them after the jump.

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