Midtown Lunch

We are somewhat lacking in quality ramen soup options in the Financial District, or rather I should say, quality options for $10 or less. Most of our ramen comes from glorified delis or places like Niko Niko. When I saw that Koodo Sushi on Nassau (at Liberty) had a new ramen soup special I decided it was worth a shot since a real restaurant had a better shot at giving us the good stuff than a deli sidelining in Asian food.

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Several months after paper went up on the windows in the former space selling “exquisite jewelry”, OBAO opened last week selling a mix of Vietnamese and Thai dishes that they mercifully didn’t fuse together. There’s a steam table with Thai standards and most of the Vietnamese fare is out of the ML price range. The prices are a bit high for a place that looks like a bit more downscale, but if you’re willing to toe the $10 line you’re probably going to be pretty satisfied with your lunch here.

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This just in…it looks like the OBAO Noodles & BBQ (or was that Rhong Tiam?) at Water & Coenties Slip opened for lunch today after signage went up a little more than a month ago. Lunch’er Deep sent in the above photo and reported that it was busy, and also that they’re cash only until Friday. It looks like the pho is less than $10 but everything else like the BBQ and “traditional dishes” hovers at that mark or above. You can expect a report in the near future, but if any of you ate there today let us know your impressions in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago The Pump chain changed its name to Dig Inn and changed its menu after bringing a winner of Iron Chef America on board as its new chef. I had mentioned that I would go check out the new version if you lunchers wanted me to and after a couple of endorsements I decided to head over to the store on Pine (at Pearl) to see if healthy, protein-filled food could also be a Downtown Lunch.

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When I walked by the new location of Baoguette on Nassau St. (btw. John & Fulton) this morning the shutters were up and it looked like they were putting the finishing touches on before lunch service. Unless there’s some seating space upstairs or past the counter that I couldn’t see from the door, it looks like lunchers will once again be relegated to eating at counters along the wall and front window although the interior is definitely nicer than the old location on Maiden Lane.

Good news for those of you anxiously awaiting the opening of Kortako, the Korean taco shop on Nassau (btw. John & Fulton) from the BonChon on John people. Lunch’er Kino passed along a tidbit that the place is expected to be open by the end of October (confirmed by their Web site) and if you eat at the FiDi BonChon they’ll give you a 50% off coupon for your first visit to Kortako. When I walked by significant progress had been made on the inside so fingers crossed that they can actually open on schedule. On a side note, with this, Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches and the new location of Baoguette, Nassau St. is becoming quite the cheap Asian eats corridor.

If you know anyone who’s eaten at a Potbelly Sandwich Shop in the Midwest or anywhere outside of New York City, they’ve probably told you about the “underground” menu with different combos of sandwiches than is on the regular menu. A tweet from Potbelly about one of these new underground sandwiches led me to call the Maiden Lane location to confirm that they actually will do this menu tweaking and I was confidently assured by the man who answered the phone that they absolutely sold these items. So I rounded up a friend and headed over to wait in the always-insane line, excited to order one of the five underground sandwiches that I found after some careful research online. Click through for the outcome of this experiment.

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