Midtown Lunch

I know everyone complains that we don’t have a lot of food variety down in the Financial District, and that’s partly true. There is a source of decent Korean food (no, not the best you’ve ever had) at Soma By Nature on William St. (btw. Fulton & John). Chris had checked out the kimchi stew here as a cure for what ailed him and wasn’t too impressed. I went a different route and tried some of the rice-based dishes that may not have transported me to Korea, but did make me a happy lunch’er.

Soma has both Korean standards and for some reason, sushi. I steered clear of the latter and ordered two of the dishes from the hot bar in the back.

There are a few $5.95 lunch specials, but none of those sounded that awesome to me. Still, it’s a relatively good deal since it’s about the only place down here to find japchae.

I tried the spicy squid bowl ($7.95) and the Soma bibimbap ($7.95). One thing I noticed is that if you eat in you seem to get a little more bang for your buck – and by that I mean more rice and food in general – because they’re putting it into a large bowl instead of a small take out container.

The spicy squid was indeed on the hot side and reminded me of a Thai or Chinese concoction. They did not skimp on the squid, but my main beef is that this stuff was greasy and there wasn’t nearly enough rice in the bottom to soak it all up. Also, if you aren’t a fan of tentacles beware: there were a lot of appendages in this.

I’m no bibimbap expert, but I was pleasantly surprised by how decent Soma’s was. No, the rice on the bottom wasn’t crisp (and the stone bowl wasn’t hot at all) but I’ll forgive them since it’s a lunch spot and not a sit down restaurant. You get a mound of rice with a freshly fried egg on top and your choice of either beef or tofu. All of the vegetables and other items surrounding the bowl were tasty and didn’t taste like they’d been sitting around too long. They have a bunch of bibimbap varieties, but most are close to $10 depending on your topping choices.

If you are up for a subway lunch, I would definitely recommend heading to Jup She in Chinatown/Little Italy for their lunch box. Other than that, when I’m looking for some Korean food to stink up my office and annoy my co-workers, I’m heading to Soma.

Soma By Nature, 123 William St., (212) 608-8850