Midtown Lunch

A while back, while investigating the mysterious My Belly’s Playlist delivery service, I discovered that not only did Yorganic exist, but it sells something called Bliss Bowls which are essentially rice bowls with Korean ingredients. The kicker is that everything in this place is organic, hormone-free, natural etc. With Cafe Hanover just around the corner also selling Korean food, I was curious how these yuppie rice bowls stacked up.

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There are a lot of places over by the South St. Seaport that I forget about until someone reminds me, and Meade’s Bar is one of those places. It’s on an obscure corner that’s currently blocked by construction, and on the same block as a bunch of other cafes and a delightfully divey bar with equally cheap lunches and decoration consisting of bras. Last week Lunch’er Robyn mentioned her love of Meade’s burger with blue cheese, and a look at the bar’s menu showed a few of the sandwiches could be had for less than $10, including fries, salad or rice. That’s a bargain not often found in or near the Financial District. Read more »

You all have embraced the Biryani House Cart‘s kati rolls, biryani and chicken tikka as much as I have and for a while now they’ve had a second cart on William St. (btw. John & Maiden Lane) selling the same items as the original on Liberty St. Nothing makes me happier than seeing carts like this branch out, but the other day I realized I’d never tried the meat and potatoes at these two carts: The lamb/chicken over rice. I’ve seen people order it all the time and was curious how they spiced the chicken, or if they did anything different since they sell more than lamb, chicken and falafel.

I think you’ll be happy to see what I discovered.

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I wasn’t aware that we’d written about Pizza Italia on Stone St. (btw. Broad & Whitehall) when profiled lunch’er Matt gave his thumbs up to their round grandma and buffalo chicken slices. It turns out that former head Downtown Lunch’er Daniel had indeed checked out this round grandma pie during his tenure and gave it a thumbs up. That post even inspired Zach to muse about what exactly a grandma slice was.

All of this talk of grandmas and slices made me both confused and hungry, so I headed down to the bottom of the Financial District to check out this buffalo chicken slice and see what else Pizza Italia had to offer. Read more »

A couple of months ago, word reached ML that the Urban Lobster Shack in Midtown East had a lobster roll involving bacon. It turns out that the location on Stone St. (btw. Broad & Whitehall) also has this bacon lobster roll for $13, which is a couple of dollars more than the regular roll combo. It would appear it’s a roll with a strip of bacon inside, so whether that’s a good or bad addition is up to you to decide. I’m still a fan of their lobster scampi roll which is sounding pretty great in this warmer weather.

Sad news on the soup front – it looks like the beloved Cafe Doppio on Beaver (at Broad) has shuttered instead of simply closing for a fix-up session. I know a lot of you liked this place for their huge selection of soups, but they were also next door to a Hale & Hearty and around the corner and across the street from a Cosi and Au Bon Pain. Round that out with the Pret A Manger further up Broad St. and that seems like a little too much soup and sandwich competition in one area for a mom-and-pop store to survive.

I have pretty low standards for the Japanese food I review for this site. I know it’s chancy buying sushi lunch specials for less than $10, or buying maki rolls from a pharmacy chain. Yet, I do these things because sometimes I want rice and fish in a cheap format without street meat dumped over the top, or stepping into Terrace Fish & Chip. So when Sushi By Bento Nouveau shortened its name to Bento Sushi and got a fancy new look, I knew I had to check out its cheap offerings. Read more »