Midtown Lunch

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 Jeff who will eat durian, but not couscous and needs your help in finding a lunch spot for going-away parties.

Name: Jeff

Occupation: Independent computer consultant by day, blogger/gourmand by night

Where you work: At an I-Bank. I switch between Pine & William, Broad & Water.

Age: 35

Favorite Kinds of Food: Sashimi, curry, chocolate, ice cream, durian, pandan

Least Favorite Foods: Couscous, stuffed shells, offal

Favorite Lunches Downtown: Veronica’s Kitchen on Front (at Pine) for BBQ beef ribs on  Wed./Fri.; Bennie’s Thai Cafe on Fulton St. (at Gold) for melty pork on Tues.; Barbarini Alimentari on Front St. (nr. Beekman) for anything besides the desserts, really; Banh Mi Saigon Bakery on Grand (at Mott) for the #1, spicy; Torrisi Italian Specialties on Mulberry (at Prince) for the carved turkey; Lan Zhou Handmade Noodles on E. Broadway (btw. Pike & Rutgers) for hand-pulled noodles and dumplings; New Malaysia on Bowery (btw. Bayard & Canal) for the R1 – curry combo on rice.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: No.1 Little House Chinese restaurant on William (btw. Broad & Mill Lane) for going-away lunches. There have been plenty of those recently. It’s the only place in the FiDi that will accommodate that many (15+) people on short notice, unfortunately. Read more »

At least two people have recommended I head up to Soho’s Rheon Cafe on Spring St. (nr. Thompson) for the roast duck sandwich. One fellow lunch’er offered no explanation what was so amazing about this sandwich that I would take a train to get it, other than saying it was “really good.”  It was featured on Serious Eats last year, and last week, profiled lunch’er Rachel recommended the sandwich. I thought it might be time to head north to see what this roast duck concoction was all about. Read more »

This place just reopened. You’re beautiful just the way you are, Nom Wah. Courtesy of Lost City.

• A second location of Harry’s Italian is opening in Battery Park City. [DNA Info]
• Transient sandwich shop Crosby Connection is now in a chocolate shop in Nolita. [Eater]
• Pour one out for the jumbo hot dog window in Chinatown. [Grub St.]
• The Steamers Landing transformation into something hopefully less crappy is complete. [Village Voice]
• There’s a “damn decent offering” of a stromboli at Rubirosa. [Lunch with Front Studio]
• Shanghai Cafe is a good spot for non-meat eaters. [Serious Eats]

 I know you all like a good deal even outside of lunchtime, so here’s one for the Indian food and alcohol lovers. Hot Clay Oven, the newish Indian fusion place on Maiden (nr. Pearl) has a couple of happy hour specials from 4 to 7 p.m. for the month of February. You can either get buy-one-get-one free alcoholic drinks or a free mango lassi if you buy an entree.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing an independent eatery that I was afraid wouldn’t make it thrive. That’s the case with It’s a Pizza – the sort of weird Italian place also serving Uzbek food that I first wrote about last summer. I hadn’t made it back to try anything other than pizza on the menu so I decided to rectify that situation and took a co-lunch’er along to see how they were doing. When I was there last they hadn’t been open long and were mostly focused on pizza and pasta with some other random things thrown in, including crepes. What I tried was good, but I was worried that with all of the Fulton St. Transit Center construction nearby they might not be seeing enough customers to survive. When I walked in the other day I could see that was definitely not the case.  Read more »