Midtown Lunch

I know many of you have been waiting for the opening of  Bon Chon on John spawn, Kortako, on Nassau St. (btw. John & Fulton) which was pushed back due to Department of Health inspection delays. When I walked past on Friday there was an unexpected line out the door, and it turned out they were giving away free food during a soft opening (and you guys can apparently sniff out free food!). I grabbed a menu and confirmed that they were opening today at 11 a.m. but didn’t have time to stand in the growing line. I’ll give you a full report later this week, but you can take a look at the menu after the jump.

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Yesterday, we at Midtown Lunch: Downtown were alerted by an e-mail from a publicist that the situation at the giant kosher food hall Milk St. Cafe isn’t really any better than it was a few weeks ago when they had to lay off 21 staff members and news reports said they were hemorrhaging money. The blame was put squarely on the barricades put up on Wall St., and therefore in front of the restaurant, due to the Occupy Wall St. protests a couple of blocks up Broadway. They were taken down temporarily, but then put back up and owner Marc Epstein says that if the 30% drop in business doesn’t rebound, they’re going to have to close.

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A couple of Lunch’ers wrote in yesterday to tell us that the prices of the Tuesday and Friday specials on tacos and burritos at Toloache Taqueria on Maiden Lane (btw. William & Gold) were each raised $1 to $3 per taco and $7 per burrito. Lunch’er Eric had this to say:

Toloache finally gave in and had to raise the prices on their Tuesday and Friday specials.  A $7 Friday burrito is still a good deal there, even at a buck higher than last week.  They did expand their menu a bit.  The Carne Asada tacos are worth it.

Lunch’er Chloe also stopped in for the Tuesday taco special and discovered the price raise. They were nice enough to give it to her for $2, and she was nice enough to pass along the updated menu which you can find (in part) after the jump.

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As far as I know, fancy falafel chain Crisp hasn’t debuted a new sandwich in a while after throwing Asian and Mexican-hybrid sandwiches along with falafel burgers our way. The Crisp on Wheels truck has been talking about a new creation called the Casablanca on Twitter recently and since the truck only comes downtown one day a week it wasn’t likely I’d get to try it. Lo and behold, a look at the menu for the Fulton St. location shows it’s offered there too. If you like eggplant, this thing gives it to you in two forms.

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We now have three carts serving food from the Caribbean in the Financial District and until last week I’d eaten at two of them. The Trinidad & Tobago cart down on Whitehall St. served me a delicious roti and I really liked the food from R. Retha’s cart (aka the Jamaican Dutchy) on S. William. The cart I’d never tried was Veronica’s Kitchen on Front St. (at Pine) and I’m not quite sure why. There’s normally a long, imposing line for what Veronica’s cooking, but because it was a rainy and windy day and the area was deserted prior to Thanksgiving, there was one person in front of me when I stopped by last week. While there was jerk chicken on offer, it’s already been Downtown Lunch approved, so I went with another standby – brown stew chicken.

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I’ve eaten a lot of things that are hard to take tasty-looking pictures of – i.e. every Indian steam table lunch ever – but when I took the lid off my latest Korean meal from Cafe Hanover on Hanover Sq. (at Pearl) my heart sank a little because it looked pretty unappealing. By that I mean it looked like there was an oil spill all over some udon noodles, and that became my introduction to the dish called jja jang myun on their menu, also known as jajangmyeon.

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There are many sources of maki rolls in the Financial District, and many of them involve refrigerated cases in stores like Zeytuna or the swanky new Duane Reade (shudder). There are a couple of places that offer lunch specials with two rolls for less than $10 but most limit you to the more pedestrian varieties like salmon, tuna or California. When I noticed Taste of Tokyo on Beaver (nr. William) had a two-roll special for $8.25 I took a look at the menu and noticed some more exotic rolls were included in this special. Omelet roll anyone?

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