Copper Barrel’s $8 Specials Fill A Lunch Void Near City Hall

I was a little surprised at how much interest my post about the $8 lunch special at The Copper Barrel on Murray (btw. Broadway & Church) got from all of you lunch’ers. Then it was pointed out that there’s not much in that area for lunch, either good or bad, although if you go up to Chambers St. there are at least a few options. Most of those are fast food, though, and sometimes you just don’t want to order your meal by number. The sign outside gives no clue as to what the lunch special is, so I decided to step inside yet another dark bar in the middle of the day to find out.

It turns out you can get a chicken Caesar salad, turkey sandwich, burger or cheeseburger, or wings for $8. Everything but the salad comes with fries, so it seemed like a pretty good deal.

Much like its brethren Mudville 9, they have a good amount of seating in the back if you don’t want to sidle up to the bar to eat your lunch. I opted to get mine to go, but ended up sitting at the bar for a good 20 minutes anyway while waiting for my food. I did discover they have some decent happy hour specials, including frickles for $3.50! I really could have gone for some mid-day frickles. The burger sounded tempting, and already got an endorsement, but the wings sounded better to me. I’m not really sure who would go here and order the chicken Caesar salad, but they probably don’t read this site.

I had to wait for a while to get my food, which kind of baffled me because there were only two other people in the bar and the only one who was eating had already gotten his food. You get seven wings and a container of fries (both sweet potato and crinkle. I really wish more restaurants would default the mixed fries!) for your $8.

The wings were surprisingly good, which they should be for how long they took to make. I appreciated that they were both crispy and not completely annihilated with sauce. I went for the spicy version, but they weren’t really that hot in case you have a low tolerance. I wasn’t too impressed by the crinkle fries, but they may have suffered by being encased in their styrofoam container on the walk back to my eating spot. The few sweet potato fries mixed in were really good, though. I found myself wishing I could have just gotten straight sweet potato fries.

If you don’t work in the City Hall area it’s probably not worth going out of your way to eat here, but when the weather gets nicer you could have yourself a nice bar food picnic in the park across the street.

The Copper Barrel, 6 Murray St. (btw. Broadway & Church), (212) 323-7100

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1 Comment

  • I cant stand places that cheap out and give you 3.5 wings. How much money are they saving by not giving you that one extra wing portion for crying out loud. They aren’t american airlines where 1 olive less adds up to millions of olives a year, sheesh.

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