PROFILE: Downtown Lunch’ers “The 4 Tupps”

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch: Downtown, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have not one person being profiled, but a lunching collective known as the 4 Tupps (which you can find on Tumblr here and Twitter here). They do most of their lunch’ing on Fridays and tend to favor the mobile options.

Name: We’re The 4 Tupps, a collaborative lunch club working in an office downtown.

Occupation: Affordable housing non-profit

Where you work: Wall and Water

Age: 26 (Kerri), 28 (Claire), 27 (Adam), and 35 (Chul)

Favorite kinds of food: The 4 Tupps’ general rule is: If you put it in front of us, we will eat it. We’ve been known to chew in four-part harmony and condition our hair with homemade gazpacho. When we picnic on the Elevated Acre, it’s in perfect concentric circles. You want what we’ve got, and we get it from eating these favorites: Kerri’s is Mexican food; Claire’s is Mid-east and Indian flavors – big spice and warm rice; Adam likes anything with lots of garlic, along with Thai and Italian cuisine; Chul’s favorites are BBQ, Asian and Latin American.

Least favorite foods: You can probably count the number of things we won’t eat on one hand. Anything poorly or irresponsibly prepared is generally a no-no. Even our pickiness is refined (Kerri will gladly tell you why cream cheese is okay, but sour cream is most certainly not.) And for one of us, it’s bananas…never bananas. Kerri dislikes fast food (particularly Arby’s); Claire doesn’t like Subway or cold sandwich wraps; Adam abhors everything banana related; Chul dislikes those nameless Wall Street buffet-style delis.

Favorite lunches downtown: For four days of the work week we are eating home-cooked collaborative lunches prepared by members of the crew. We think the Financial District is something of a restaurant wasteland, so when we do purchase lunches they’re typically from the myriad of food trucks and carts that populate the greater Wall Street area, especially on Fridays. Kerri’s favorite is the Jiannetto’s Pizza Truck (usually at Wall and Front) for the eggplant parm sandwich; Claire likes Adel’s #1 Halal Cart at the corner of Front and Maiden Lane for a plate of half chicken, half falafel over yellow rice with tahini and eggplant; Adam favors Korilla BBQ Truck, on Wednesdays and Fridays at Front and Gouverneur, for the bulgogi burrito; Chul likes Leo’s Bagels at Hanover Square & Pearl for the Benny’s Club sandwich on an everything bagel.

The “go-to” lunch places you and your co-workers eat at too often: Some of our favorite spots also double as our most-frequented and include Chipotle, Korilla and Adel’s halal cart. Clearly we are a complex group of lunch’ers.

Places downtown you discovered thanks to Midtown Lunch: Downtown? Diwan-E-Khaas (Multiple Locations), Toum Truck (Lebanese), Frites N Meats Truck.

Dream job location, purely for lunch purposes, and why: Our lunching habits are based primarily on our weekly collaborations so the only thing that really matters is that we’re in the same office. Perish the thought of one of us moving on to another career (or, worse yet, deciding to go solo). But if it had to happen, here’s where we’d want to land: Kerri says she’s “already living the dream, obviously.” Claire says “Midtown East/Herald Square for Woorijip in Koreatown, the bargain lunch buffet at Dhaba in Curry Hill, and Stumptown Coffee in the Ace Hotel.” Adam says “Anywhere there are people willing to collaborate for a lunch club! Or Midtown, close to Koreatown and Curry Hill.” Chul says “Chinatown for the noodles, dumplings, rice, and soups. Good proximity to everything the Lower East Side has to offer, too.”

Anything you’d like to ask the Midtown Lunch: Downtown readers? We encourage other office teammates to collaborate the way we do. It’s something to consider – a time and money saver in the long run, and fitting since the United Nations has officially declared 2012 the International Year of the Co-op. Strength in numbers! And while we’re here…Claire wants to know of good suggestions for Mexican food (of the truck or dine-in variety).

There are two good Mexican food trucks, San Luis Tacos at Front & Wall and Tacos Morelos on Wall at Pearl. For sit down, Toloache Taqueria on Maiden Lane is decent and a new location of Sabor de Mexico‘s opening on Nassau St. btw. John & Fulton. As always, if you would like to be next week’s Profiled Lunch’er (or know somebody you’d like to nominate), email us at downtown@midtownlunch.com.

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