Midtown Lunch

I don’t know if there’s a vent outside my window from McDonald’s or from the generic deli on the ground floor of the office building I work in, but the smell of cooking hamburgers is constantly wafting in to my desk. I guess it’s better than rotting garbage, but it’s annoying getting hungry at about 11 a.m. every day.

Most of the time I can ignore the meaty smell, but one day I just really wanted a greasy burger and fries for lunch. I thought about checking out the newish Go Burger Truck at the South St. Seaport (anybody checked this thing out?) but reviews have not been promising. So instead I went to the forums and saw that lunch’er boomshanka had listed a cheeseburger from the Blarney Stone on Trinity Place (btw. Exchange Pl. & Morris ) as one of his go-to lunches. I was doubly intrigued because while another Blarney Stone on Fulton St. recently closed, this one was featured a couple of months ago as the recipient of a make-over by some new reality show called “Construction Intervention” on the Discovery Channel.

And that was how I ended up at a newly classy bar at noon on a Monday with a burger on my mind. Read more »

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, we have five guys from Wieden + Kennedy in Soho. You may know them as the ones with the awesome Wall of Restaurant Worship. They have pretty different eating styles and I’m amazed they can ever agree on where to get lunch, but they have quite the list of favorite spots.

Name: Phil Chang, Eric Collins, Larry Pipitone, Joey Ellis, Keiji Ando

Occupation: Multi-disciplinary creative team (also DJing couples therapy
sessions).

Where you work: Wieden + Kennedy NY

Ages: 23 – 25

Favorite Kinds of Food: It’s impossible to answer this question without offending one of us. The group ranges from Phil, who’ll eat anything just to say he ate it to Larry, who might flip the table if there’s anything other than polenta and chicken on his plate. Eric and Joey are open to expanding their palates, but are admittedly conservative with the exploration of foods they haven’t tried yet. Keiji is ostensibly invested in discovering new foods but for some reason refuses to admit if there are things he doesn’t particularly enjoy eating.

Least Favorite Foods: If we start at the middle of the spectrum, Eric and Joe kind of draw the line at things like chicken feet, jellyfish and tripe, so the texture foods of the world have historically been off the table for them.You know, things you might see “Food Network” travel hosts feign freak-outs over. Keiji has a completely subjective distaste for cafeteria-style food from certain local take-out spots, while others are, inexplicably, completely agreeable. The rest of us can’t understand where the prejudice springs from. Meanwhile, Larry’s most frequent menu selections are not dissimilar to what the Irish imaginably had access to during the Potato Famine. Conversely, it’s hard to pinpoint what Phil won’t eat because he’s eaten genitalia in stews before. Allegedly, this was not of the human variety. Read more »

Looks like the new Eddie’s Pizza Truck is coming downtown today after making its debut last week up north (aka midtown). They serve thin-crust bar pies and initial reviews seem promising, although they’ve been plagued by long lines from people ordering for their offices. You can get a pie with one topping, a side and a drink for $10, or they have a chicken cutlet with hot cherry peppers as a special this week. Check them out on Twitter to see the exact location. Update: Looks like they are at Broad & Water streets.

When I woke up on Friday it looked like it would be a beautiful day for the first ever vendor-organized pushcart market downtown. People from the Street Vendor Project told me the day before that they had no idea what carts would show up or even how many.It was a pilot project, and if successful enough they hope to do it once again, Marisa Jahn from the SVP said before the event. A subcommittee made up of vendors chose the food carts that would be at the market.

By the time I headed over to Park Place (btw. Broadway & Church) shortly after noon in my stretch pants (really) and with an empty stomach the weather was cool and looked rainy. The Biriyani Cart from midtown and a Jamaican cart from the Bronx were supposed to be there, but I saw no sign of them. There were about 10 other food vendors there, including a transplant from the Red Hook Ballfield vendors in Brooklyn, a new Taiwanese cart,  and a lady selling pastelillos or what you could call Puerto Rican empanadas. Also on hand was a truck called the Cinnamon Snail selling vegan and organic food, some people selling fruit, two or three halal vendors and a guy selling a fried rice with ribs and a chicken wing for $7. That one seemed popular with construction workers.

So, what did my $10 buy me at this vendor mash up? Plenty of food porn after the jump.

Read more »

These five dumplings cost less than a hot dog, courtesy of Food In Mouth

• I am not the only one who finds Prosperity Dumpling utterly delicious. [Food In Mouth]
• You can now get your fix of raw Holland herring from the just in-bounds Russ & Daughters. No, really, you first. [Fork In The Road]
• Does a blueberry cake doughnut count as lunch? I vote yes. [Serious Eats NY]
• A new Taiwanese chain has taken over the space that once was the short-lived and reviled chain Kung Fu Bing. [Grub St.]