Midtown Lunch

Midtown Lunch’ers have had the luxury of eating at Bill’s Bar & Burger for awhile, and now we will too. The purveyor of griddled burgers of many varieties, wings, fries, etc. opened in the Marriott NY Financial Center on West St. (btw. Carlisle & Albany) on Monday. While it’s probably not as convenient as popping into, say, Shake Shack or Clarke’s Standard for your burger fix, you can at least get out of there with a lunch for around $10 (if you share fries with someone).

When last week Lunch’er KD1005 commented that we should check out a cart being run by a former worker at the venerable Sam’s Falafel, my ears perked up.

For you see, Sam’s is one of the longest running carts in the Financial District serving some of the best falafel platters and sandwiches, and anyone who worked there must have absorbed some of that awesomeness. Sure enough, a visit to the two-month-old Yummy Fawl & Falafel cart at Church & Barclay streets yields a similar falafel platter but there’s no line.  Read more »

Since being spotted in Midtown in June, the Chipsy King truck has been trying out spots in various areas of downtown. According to their sporadically-updated Twitter, they have parked in Soho, and lately, at Wall & William which is where I spotted them on Monday.

They aren’t great about updating where they will be parking daily. If you’re in the mood for a heaping helping of Belgian fries, perhaps check out Wall St. come lunch time and you’ll be rewarded by this truck parking there. Hopefully the truck doesn’t go the way of the Frying Dutchmen truck.

We have hoagies. We have banh mi. We have cheese steaks. We have more Lenny’s locations than are necessary. Now we’re getting Jersey Mike’s Subs.

I spotted the awning and papered up windows on Maiden Lane at Gold St. on Monday. A look at their Web site shows they have locations all over the U.S. but I don’t recall ever seeing one in NYC before. The menu looks like an upgraded version of Subway with hot and cold sandwiches that include various cold cut combos, cheese steaks and parms.

It seems like they’re going for the hoagie market, so Dave’s Hoagies may have some competition.

When last we visited Roti Mediterranean Grill on Pearl St. (at Cedar), it was a soft opening, the food was free, the lines were long and I was undecided as to whether I liked this place or not. That was back in May, and since then, every time I’ve walked by there’s been a line out the door (or they’ve been closed. That’s seemed to happen a lot too), and that’s a lot to say with so many lunch options on the same block.

So, I decided to actually purchase some food this time and see if it was better than what I got when they were doing staff training. My thoughts on healthified street cart fare straight ahead.

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Best subway snack ever. Via Fork in the Road.

• New juice bar-type place coming from Nish Nush owners. [Tribeca Citizen]
• So many Italian combos, so little stomach space. [SENY]
• A celebrity’s wife is opening a Tribeca cafe. [Grub St.]
• The story behind the subway churro sellers. [FitR]