Midtown Lunch

If you frequent the street food carts on Broadway between Liberty and Cedar streets you’re probably familiar with Zak’s Halal cart (later known by the man always working there, who told Daniel his name was Musthafa). A while ago, this affable man disappeared from the cart and I’ve never seen him working there since. There was always a line at this cart, mostly for the awesome chicken over rice plate. Lately I’ve noticed that line has disappeared and I was curious if the food had gone downhill or if everyone else was just suspicious with unknown faces cooking the food. So I did the only reasonable thing and went to eat a plate of street meat. Update: As you can see from the comment below, and confirmed by a couple of lunchers, Mustafa is back! He was just on vacation.

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I’m not quite sure why more restaurants don’t have windows selling one item, such as Luke’s Lobster‘s lobster roll express window, and the one I spotted the other day outside Koko on Greenwich St. (btw. Carlisle & Albany). Nearly everything on the lunch menu at this Asian fusion place is priced at or over the $10 limit (OK, there are a few items for $9.50, but who’s going to pay that for chicken & broccoli?). If you’re not choosy, you can get one specific Americanized Chinese item for half price – but you have to order it while standing on the sidewalk.

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All the way back in 2010, Kevin checked out Ruchi on Cedar St. (btw. Greenwich & Trinity Place) and found its “50% off North Indian” lunch deal to be kind of a rip-off. They still have that deal on offer, but have also added a variety of lunch boxes, perhaps after one too many people complained about not getting rice with their meals? The boxes seem like a pretty good deal but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve tried one (or one of you lunchers tells us if they’re decent).

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 Rich who has a lot of good sandwich recommendations for the Soho/South Village area.

Name: Rich

Occupation: Software engineer

Where you work: Bleecker & Broadway

Age: 29

Favorite kinds of food: Ramen, chirashi, burgers, oysters, anything spicy or fermented (except stinky tofu).

Least favorite foods: Stinky tofu, over-cooked BBQ, anything super greasy

Favorite lunches downtown: No. 9 tuna sandwich and bee stinger smoothie at Lite Delights (a.k.a. “Juice Bar”) on E. Houston & Mott; “Matthew” proscuitto & mozzarella sandwich on semolina at Alidoro on Sullivan (btw. Spring & Prince); Tuna 1.0 or lamb sandwich at Snack on Thompson (btw. Spring & Prince); Super Heebster on an everything bagel, toasted, at Russ & Daughters on E. Houston (btw. Allen & Orchard); Calexico burrito at the Calexico Cart on Wooster (at Prince); Tofu spicy udon or beef bibimbap at Duke’s on Broadway (at Spring); Pretzel sandwich with turkey at Whole Foods on E. Houston (at Bowery).

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