Midtown Lunch

Exciting news came out yesterday that the Battery Park City Shake Shack location announced in July of last year is opening in May. It’s on North End Ave. and will be joined by another outpost of Harry’s Italian and a couple of other higher-end (meaning probably not ML friendly) Danny Meyer restaurants in the Goldman Sachs building. Top this off with the Ed’s Lobster Bar kiosk reopening this week and its spin off pizza place, and BPC is looking pretty exciting for lunch these days. Your move FiDi! Photo courtesy of burgerclub.

Those of you working in the lunch wasteland that is Battery Park City can get a little excited with the news that you’re getting the first downtown Shake Shack. The local Community Board 1 gave its approval according to Eater and it looks like Shake Shack is slated to open in early-to-mid 2011 and BBQ place Blue Smoke later in 2011. There’s also some fancy restaurant coming in, but let’s keep our eyes on the prize of those burgers. Photo courtesy of Eater.

I know that the eateries in the World Financial Center don’t really get any love from this site, partly because they’re either places we try to avoid (Au Bon Pain, Cosi, Starbucks), or they’re just too freaking expensive (Grill Room, SouthWest NY, P.J. Clarke’s).  Basically most of them are chain places, with a couple of exceptions like the newly opened Ed’s Lobster Bar Cart and Quality Burger. When I heard they were having an event to sample food from these restaurants, I decided to go check it out because I know a lot of people work at the WFC and I was curious if there was anything worthy of a Midtown Lunch. Read more »

There has become quite the crop of places selling lobster rolls in the city, and downtown has not been immune to this trend. First, there was the Urban Lobster Shack on Stone St. (btw. Broadway & Broad), and now there’s Ed’s Lobster Cart at the marina behind the World Financial Center in Battery Park City. I went two days after it opened, so I’ll keep that in mind with this assessment.  It’s an offshoot of the fancy-pants Ed’s Lobster Bar in Soho, and the prices at this cart are lower rent, but still pricey for cheap-ass lunch’ers. Read more »