Midtown Lunch

In a continuation of my quest to tell you about some delicious food that I haven’t gotten around to sharing with you on Downtown Lunch yet, today’s installment comes from Fanelli Cafe on Prince St. (at Mercer). I’ve never eaten anything at Fanelli’s other than the burger and vegetable burger, and I really don’t think there’s much else worth ordering except alcohol. This bar is one of my favorite old-timey spots in the city and is one of the few non-pretentious places to get a beer and some decent food after dealing with the hordes of tourists in the area. But back to this veggie burger. I think it’s the sum of its parts that make it great, or perhaps the fact that it doesn’t fall apart into a pile of mush when you bit into it. And dare I say it tastes a little meaty?

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If you don’t want to stand outside in the drizzle at the World Financial Center food truck lot, you’ll be happy to know there’s another event inside at the Winter Garden today called Noodlepalooza. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. you can check out some actual noodles and vaguely noodle-related items for less than $5 from some of the restaurants in and around the WFC like Harry’s Italian, Wei West, Milk Truck, Table Tales, Blue Smoke and against all odds…Starbucks?!? (the full list can be found here). It’s a good chance to try out some upper crust restaurants’ food on a Midtown Lunch budget.

Normally we don’t post about things happening on weekends (unless it’s something awesome like the Vendy Awards), but there’s a pilot event this Sunday at the New Amsterdam Market at the South St. Seaport that sounds pretty cool. It’s called International Meats Local and involves Vendy winners including Solber Pupusas, A-Pou’s Taste and Veronica’s Kitchen cooking some of their regular dishes with sustainable, locally-sourced ingredients. There are early bird and general admission tickets available here for $30 or $20 respectively, and they include tastes of the food.

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 Yury who is looking for the perfect Indian burrito (my terminology, not his).

Name: Yury

Occupation: Fraud investigator

Where you work: Broadway & Cedar

Age: 24

Favorite kinds of food: I generally love food and love trying new things, but the three things that I can never go wrong with are burgers, sushi and kati rolls.

Least favorite foods: I can’t stand olives, but other than that I will eat almost anything (within reason).

Favorite lunches downtown: There are a bunch of places downtown that I tend to rotate among. These include: Pita Press on Cedar (btw. William & Pearl) for chicken and lamb platters; Water St. Deli on Water (btw. Broad & Moore) for great udon noodles and a fantastic specialty sandwich selection; Flavors (Multiple Locations) has a nice salad bar; Zeytuna on Maiden Lane (btw. Nassau & William) for their large selection of pretty much everything you can imagine, and it’s also a great place during the summer since they have outdoor seating; Suspenders on Broadway (btw. Pine & Thames), Goodburger on Maiden Lane (at Pearl) and Five Guys on Fulton (at Dutch) all have good burgers. Also, the other day I discovered that there is a Shake Shack over on Murray St. by the World Financial Center, so they will definitely be seeing a lot of me in the coming weeks!

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