Midtown Lunch

Looks can sometimes be deceiving when looking at a food item. Take Indian food – sometimes extremely unphotogenic, yet a party in your mouth. The same rule applies with the Sunday gravy tasca from Table Tales on Water St. (nr. Beekman). I had seen a glorious picture of this item from the New Amsterdam Market and was happy to see it’s on their regular menu. I headed over to get one to go (and this may have been the fatal flaw) with visions of meatballs and tomato sauce dancing in my head. What I got surprised me.

As Kevin had mentioned in a previous review of a different sandwich from here, this is a nice place to have lunch. You feel like you’re in a small town somewhere about to go apple picking or do anything except head back to your desk to stare at a computer.

My food ($7.95) was ready after waiting a few minutes and I walked a couple of blocks before opening the box. What I found inside was a little scary looking. From afar my lunch looked like two giant ribs or something.

Upon closer inspection it was two separate long ciabatta pieces, hollowed out a little bit, with the Sunday gravy poured in. One piece had much more meaty goodness in it while the other was mostly tomato sauce with bits of meat. But you know what? It was delicious.

There were several large chunks of pork in the sauce along with some other ground meat. The picture I had seen showed the tasca with some parmesan on top and a little cheese would have been nice. Maybe they just forgot it? Between the bread, meat and handful of those rosemary potato chips thrown in the box this was a filling enough lunch and I thought the price was right.

If you’re looking for an alternative to another meatball or eggplant parm, this might be it.

Table Tales, 243 Water St. (btw. Beekman & Peck Slip), (212) 766-2370