Midtown Lunch

Photo courtesy of Dave H.

You all have been good with the tips this week, but one from Lunch’er Chris brought some not great news about Paulie’s Place on Baxter St. (btw. Walker & White).

Just as an FYI – Paulie’s Place, a go-to cheap sandwich place on Baxter that serves many of the people who work in the downtown courthouses, has a sign at the counter indicating it will be closing “indefinitely” on Friday due to the rising cost of doing business.

In true Chinatown fashion, people online testify that you could get sandwiches and burgers for $3 or $4 and it was fast and tasty. Did any of you eat here regularly?

Most people looking for Malaysian food in Chinatown head to Nyonya on Grand St. which is slightly classier than other places in the neighborhood. If you’re looking for a more bare-bones experience that requires walking down a steep flight of stairs, you may want to consider Sanur which serves some Americanized Chinese food, but specializes in Indonesian and Malaysian food. At first it was unclear if I was walking into a travel agency or restaurant due to the number of travel posters in the stairway. I can confirm that cheap Indonesian food can be found at the bottom of those steep stairs leading to Sanur, and it’s a nice change of pace from all of the Chinese options in the surrounding area.

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There was a time when I used to confuse Parisi Bakery with Paris Sandwich, but that was before I had eaten at both of them and learned how laughable that was. One is a venerable Italian bakery and sandwich purveyor in Nolita where you’re served by men who are efficient yet polite, while the other is a duo of Vietnamese banh mi shops in Chinatown staffed by women who are rushed yet polite.

I’ve been to most of the banh mi sellers in Chinatown except Paris Sandwich so I decided to remedy that situation and stop in the other day. I went to both the location on Mott St. (btw. Canal & Hester) and one on Grand St. (btw. Elizabeth & Mott), and both sell sandwiches supposedly made with baguettes baked every hour plus a small roster of other Vietnamese dishes and appetizers. While pork chop over rice did sound good, I instead tried a couple of different sandwiches since I wasn’t that impressed with the first one I tried and was sure they could do better.

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The string of Vietnamese restaurants on Baxter St. between Bayard St. and Walker are among my favorite places to eat in Chinatown and although I’ve tried the pho at Nha Trang, I’d never eaten at Thai Son . Since it was a sweltering summer day, I bypassed the pho section of the menu and instead went for some bun with a mix of Vietnamese spring rolls and grilled pork on top. The generic “grilled pork” on the menu sounds pretty basic, and it is, but calling it pork candy may be more accurate.

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A while ago one of my friends persuaded me to eat at Dim Sum Go Go on E. Broadway (at Chatham Sq.), and it wasn’t bad. No, you don’t get the charm of the carts going by, but if you’re looking for a somewhat quick dim sum lunch near City Hall and the government buildings and courthouses it’s a good option. While there I noticed they had a 10-piece dim sum platter on the lunch menu for precisely $10 and decided to go back and see if it was worth bypassing the cheaper options in Chinatown.

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The stars aligned one day when I had to head up to Little Italy/Chinatown, and just so happened to be right across the street from Banh Mi Saigon Bakery on Grand St. (btw. Mott & Mulberry). It turns out this site has never done a proper review of the place, although it did fare well in a Banh Mi Battle Royale that Daniel conducted. I am never one to turn down a cheap sandwich, especially if it’s from a combination jewelry store/banh mi seller. This works way better than combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell. Read more »

It’s that time of year when everything smells like hot garbage and cold lunches start to sound good. Yesterday was a scorcher and at first I was thinking a sandwich sounded good for lunch. But then I remembered that a new location of Xi’an Famous Foods had opened on Bayard St. (btw. Mott & Elizabeth) and that they had a few cold noodle dishes. This immediately sounded like a way better idea than a sandwich so I made my way to the J train for the first time in a long time and headed up to Chinatown.

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