Midtown Lunch

It’s summer and when it’s hot outside sometimes a room temperature lobster roll sounds like the only thing good to eat, besides ice cream. The problem is if you go to the Red Hook Lobster Truck, Luke’s Lobster or any other place that serves seafood stuffed into toasted hot dog buns, you’re going to pay $15 or more for the privilege.

But! As we’ve discovered at Luke’s, sometimes the other seafood rolls are both cheaper and tastier (or as tasty) as the lobster variety. With this in mind, I hit up Red Hook Lobster’s kiosk at the South St. Seaport’s Smorgasburg pop up and sampled their shrimp roll. I was not disappointed.  Read more »

Normally we don’t cover openings of chain convenience stores but the first 7-11 is about to open its doors and I think we can all agree that a Slurpee sounds so good right now. The store is at John St. & Pearl, and it looks pretty nice from the outside. It also looks as though they have more food to offer than hot dogs endlessly spinning around and taquitos.

Sometimes all you want for lunch is some protein, vegetables and rice. You could go for street meat or falafel, or a cheap Chinese special, but Thai is also at the top of my list when that feeling hits. And amazingly, we’ve never reviewed one of the cheaper sources of a Thai food lunch in the Financial District – Cafe Sage on John St. (at Cliff).

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There’s a program this summer called Water St. Pops which involves a bunch of entertainment options, as well as cooking demonstrations and, what we all care about, free food.

On Friday you can get free Ben & Jerry’s frozen yogurt from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1 New York Plaza (South & Whitehall streets). They’re also doing a sampling at 200 Water St. from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Other events include lunch markets with Stone St. Tavern and Route 66 Smokehouse from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at the Elevated Acre at 55 Water St. and again on Thursday at the same time and place.

At this point, I think I’ve tried most of the kati rolls available in the Financial District, at carts or brick and mortar shops. Some singed my hands with hot oil, while others were a more expensive revelation. Mostly I was looking for a happy medium between salty street meat and greasy paratha.

I still hadn’t tried the kati rolls at Shafiq’s Halal cart on Broadway at Liberty St. where I had a decent plate of chicken biryani soon after they started parking on the plaza. Believe me, it was hard to resist the lure of shrimp and fries or mini egg rolls on Shafiq’s sort of random menu, but I did.

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Is an $11 hoagie cheap? Via Grub St.

• Bill’s Bar & Burger will open for breakfast first. [Eater NY]
• The roots of a chain coming to Tribeca (yes, it’s salad). [NY Times]
• NY Mag has dropped its somewhat cheap eats list. [Grub St.]
• Crafts are out, fro yo and overrated cupcakes are in at the Seaport. [DNAinfo]
• Take a look at ‘wichcraft’s summer sandwiches. [SENY]

Food carts are not welcome here either.

You know what sucks? Going to eat at a specific cart and finding that they are nowhere to be found. It’s doubly frustrating because, unlike many food trucks, most don’t use Twitter to update their location mostly because they work to stay in the same place every day.

Now that my little rant is over, you’d probably like to know where all of the carts that were parked on Nassau St. between Liberty and Cedar went. As of late last week all but the smoothie cart were booted from their new spots, after previously being forced to move from Liberty & Broadway when an inanimate object (aka, a Citi Bike rack) moved into their spots. The good news? Many of the carts have found new spots or are scouting locations. Read more »