Midtown Lunch

Why would anyone not want to eat fried dough? Courtesy of Lunch with Front Studio

• There is a magical cart on Canal St. in Chinatown that sells 15 hotcakes for $1 and apparently some people need convincing to try them. [Lunch with Front Studio]
• The otherwise pretentious-sounding Pecan Cafe in Tribeca sells a lunch that offers both a crapload of food and comes in just under the ML price guidelines. [Serious Eats NY]
• The guacamole at Pinche Taqueria is sad and watery, and the tacos are bland. On the upside, as least they were kind of cheap. [Feisty Foodie]
• If only the almost out-of-bounds Doughnut Plant were a little closer to the Financial District, and this doughnut could make friends with my stomach. [Blondie & Brownie]
• Oh dear…J&R Electronics now has a cafe serving crepes, sandwiches and coffee, but hopes to add other European foods. This still isn’t as strange as the Russian bath restaurant on Fulton St. [DNA info]

In case you’ve forgotten to nominate your favorite food vendor for the 2010 Vendy Awards, you have until Saturday to do so.You can find the nomination form here, and conveniently also buy your $85 ticket to the event. As an added bonus, if you nominate a vendor you’ll be entered to win a pair of tickets. The awards are Sept. 25 on Governor’s Island, and if the enticement of unlimited food and drink doesn’t lure you in, I don’t know what will. Zach has it on good authority that the event is more popular than usual this year, so help out the Street Vendor Project and your taste buds at the same time. Find all our past coverage here if you procrastinators need more convincing.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t know a Thames St. existed in the Financial District. Sure enough, it does, and on it you’ll find Big Al’s Chicago-Style Pizza (btw. Broadway & Trinity Pl.). Lunch’er Paul had recommended its regular slice so I decided to go check it out on one of those day’s where I couldn’t decide what lunch appealed to me. It’s one of only a couple of businesses on the street that only exists for two blocks. According to its menu, Big Al’s has been around for 30 years and a steady stream of people came in and out while I was there during prime lunch time. The weird thing is, that they don’t really seem to focus on the deep dish pizza that you think of as Chicago-style, although they do list a pie with a “special crisp and fluffy crust.” I guess there’s always Pizzeria Uno at the South Street Seaport for that. Read more »

If you’re like me, you don’t really go to the area of Centre St. near City Hall unless you’re on jury duty, get arrested (I would imagine) or you work there and/or are defending someone in a court of law. The other option is that you are a tourist or just really like walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. One day after getting off the subway at the City Hall station, I noticed a couple of food kiosks had popped up in a weird triangular area at the base of the bridge. They were Choza Taqueria and The Pantry, and they make up half of the Open Air Cafe. Two other kiosks for Lucky Buns (not this kind, sadly, but burgers) and an Italian pizza and pasta kiosk called  Sauced are on the opposite side of the massive 1 Centre St. building. I had originally ventured over to check out Choza’s tacos only to find the place closed. So I walked over to the neighboring Pantry to see what they had on offer.

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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 Tom who works in the dead zone of the World Financial Center, but ventures over to the FiDi for some Caribbean and has a very short list of food dislikes.

Name: Tom

Occupation: Finance

Where you work: World Financial Center

Age: 24

Favorite Kinds of Food: Kind of everything, but some highlights are pork buns, moules frites, ramen, herring, cheeeeeeeese, bacon, and dessert pizza. What’s dessert pizza you ask? It’s when you go to an Italian place like Franny’s and eat a bunch of cured meats, pizza and pasta and when the server brings you the dessert menu, you ask for another pizza. I also like having ridiculous food parties for things that I would probably never make otherwise. This has included gypsy bacon and kimchi skewers, totchos, and waffles stuffed with cheese/bacon/fried apples/pancetta and topped with fried chicken/gravy/whipped mascarpone.

Least Favorite Foods: I try to like everything and if there’s something I don’t like, I figure I just haven’t tried hard enough. Bitter melon probably took the most effort, and it’s the one I’m still not sure about. Read more »

It appears that fresh on the heels of Vietnamese Sandwiches opening in the Financial District, there is a branch of Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches opening soon. I had spotted this space under construction on Ann St. near Nassau, and Nicky’s Web site confirms that there is a new location near there opening soon. There are a lot of vacant storefronts nearby, but this was the only one that was under construction or looked suitable for a sandwich shop. Eater is reporting that it should be open in the next couple of weeks. It’s a couple of blocks from Baoguette and pretty far from the other places selling banh mi, and Nicky’s definitely will win the price wars if it keeps its pricing model where sandwiches top out at $5.50. It will be interesting to see at what point the Financial District reaches Vietnamese sandwich saturation.