Midtown Lunch

We now have three carts serving food from the Caribbean in the Financial District and until last week I’d eaten at two of them. The Trinidad & Tobago cart down on Whitehall St. served me a delicious roti and I really liked the food from R. Retha’s cart (aka the Jamaican Dutchy) on S. William. The cart I’d never tried was Veronica’s Kitchen on Front St. (at Pine) and I’m not quite sure why. There’s normally a long, imposing line for what Veronica’s cooking, but because it was a rainy and windy day and the area was deserted prior to Thanksgiving, there was one person in front of me when I stopped by last week. While there was jerk chicken on offer, it’s already been Downtown Lunch approved, so I went with another standby – brown stew chicken.

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I noticed that Indian steam-table standby Diwan E Khaas (Multiple Locations) has dropped its prices instead of raising them like a lot of other places are doing, perhaps in an effort to get more people in the door. You can get a vegetable or chicken dish or fish curry along with rice or naan for the low, low price of $5.99. I know many of you have a love/hate relationship with this mini-chain, but $5.99 for lunch is a pretty good deal down here. Will this get any more of you Lunch’ers to eat there?

It’s unclear when it happened, but Lemongrass Grill on William St. (at Maiden Lane) has shuttered. This was one of the fancier Thai places in the Financial District and was mostly out of Downtown Lunch price range, but they did have really good noodles (or was it soup?). This basically leaves Bennie’s Thai Cafe as the best Thai option for the $10 and under budget in this part of the FiDi.

That’s some fine looking fried chicken. Courtesy of Lunch Studio.

• Slightly out-of-bounds Miss Lily’s is opening a snack shop and juice bar next door. [Grub St.]
• Aroma Espresso Bar is opening in Tribeca. [Eater]
• Lovely Day has ginger fried chicken. [Lunch Studio]
• ‘wichcraft has a tasty looking sandwich involving sweet potato. [Serious Eats NY]
• A place called Picasso Pizzeria has closed, but no one knows why. [Broadsheet Daily]

There are a handful of places downtown that offer Thanksgiving sandwiches year-round but some of them are more than $10 (yes, really) or others I shun because they throw it all in a wrap instead of between slices of bread. Last year I found a good specimen and this year I decided to branch out and try the Thanksgiving Leftovers sandwich at ‘sNice on Sullivan St. (btw. Prince & W. Houston). The difference between this and most other turkey/cranberry/stuffing sandwiches out there is that this one’s not just vegetarian, but vegan. Read more »