Midtown Lunch

If you’ve ever eaten at Yushi in the World Financial Center (or in midtown) you may have noticed that they’re hellbent on making you eat healthy Asian food. I had only eaten their food once at the Taste of the World Financial Center and wasn’t overly impressed with the Peking duck pancakes I had. But then I found out they started serving “king katsu curry” for $9.95 this week and I figured it was an excellent chance to head over to Battery Park City. It also begged the question: what happens when you bake katsu? Forge ahead to see what it looks like! 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 lunch’ers Yen and Michi who are architects that sideline in food blogging on Lunch with Front Studio. They try not to play favorites with lunch destinations, or with what they will eat.

Names: Yen Ha and Michi Yanagishita

Occupation: Architects

Where you work: We have our own firm: Front Studio Architects

Age: No spring chickens – 36 and 37

Favorite Kinds of Food: Salty kinds

Least Favorite Foods: Foods that start with the letter “Q”…  Uhh joking aside, perhaps foods you need to flex your foodie machismo muscles for?  I don’t really know what that means.  Poorly cooked foods?  We don’t really like ruling things out.  You never know what you’ll end up liking (or disliking)

Favorite Lunches Downtown: Shanghai Café for their soup dumplings and rice cakes; Roast pork with rice and beans at La Nueva  Conquista come immediately to mind.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: We try not to repeat our lunch location for at least 6 weeks, so it’s kind of impossible for us to eat somewhere too often.  But probably the closest to always being in the mood for, or a no-brainer would probably be Shanghai Café. Read more »

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. Read more »

That will be $6.25, please. Courtesy of Serious Eats.

• This coconut cake costs more than many of my lunches. [Serious Eats NY]
• A new convenience store is selling fancy coffee and pastries. Take that 7-11! [Grub St.]
• Maker of delicious soup dumplings, Shanghai Cafe, is being sued for labor violations [Fork In The Road]
• In other dumpling news, North Dumpling is awesome. [Food In Mouth]
• A meatball sub from Alleva makes Little Italy seem less lame. [Lunch with Front Studio]

When profiled lunch’er Chirag mentioned one of his favorite lunches downtown was the veguette banh mi at Baoguette, I was both intrigued and skeptical. To me soy protein masquerading as a meat product (in this case kung pao chicken) is kind of like the McRib: trying to be something it’s not. I know not everyone eats meat and as it’s one of the only vegetarian banh mi options in the Financial District (other than Nicky’s Vietnamese tofu version). Clearly someone had to try this sandwich for research purposes. Read more »

One of the Financial District’s sources of greasy Chinese food, Win Won on Liberty Place, was closed when I walked by yesterday. As you can see, the cause of the shutter was the Department of Health. There are a couple of sad things about this: First, they just got a fancy new sign, and also, because I have been keeping an eye on whether they posted their DOH letter grade. Guess I got my answer!