Midtown Lunch

When I walked by 22 Thai Cuisine on Maiden Lane (btw. Nassau & Broadway) last night it was empty, and by today was open and packed for lunch. They move quickly! It replaces another Asian place Sushi a la Kawa that closed and merged with Oka Sushi a couple of doors down. My Spidey sense tells me the Thai spot is owned by the same people, but hey, maybe I’m wrong. A look at the lunch menu shows it’s pretty standard Thai fried rice/curry/noodle dishes for $8 or $9, but there were a couple of other interesting things on the other portion of the menu, like Thai pork chops.I’m already bracing myself for disappoint, but I hope that 22 Thai proves me wrong. Plus, a new truck serving Cuban food was spotted downtown, after the jump. Read more »

There are some days where you may want to eat a $15 lobster roll or $1 pork and chive dumplings for lunch. But other times it’s good to just graze your way through lunch, and what better way to do that than at an outdoor market?

Every Wednesday from noon to 6 p.m. the Fulton Stall Market holds court on South Street (btw. Beekman & Fulton St. at the old Fulton Fish Market). There were only a handful of vendors on hand when I got there for a late lunch, but more are expected to be added in coming weeks. I wandered over to see if I could construct a reasonable lunch for $10 or under from the vendors. Buttery, flakylunch goodness after the jump. Read more »

It looks like two new places are coming to Maiden Lane, one of which is also opening two locations in Midtown. Hot Clay Oven is bringing Indian food to 101 Maiden Lane (btw. Gold & Pearl). There’s no menu up on their Web site yet, but it does say that it will be the first of several locations in the city. I’m also intrigued by its tagline  of “really fine Indian food the American way.” What does that even mean?

The other place is Hello Pasta on the next block at 125 Maiden (btw. Pearl and Water). Its other two locations as of now have been spotted in Midtown and open at the beginning of June, and the downtown one is set to open at the end of that month. Apparently this is only the first step in the chain’s domination plans. We’ll see what the early word is from the lunch’ers to the north before passing judgment.

Both of these are on a stretch of Maiden Lane that’s crowded with other higher-end chains like Pret, Chipotle, Au Bon Pain, Just Salad and Hale & Hearty. I guess at least the area is sticking with a theme and running with it.

It’s not often I get in on naming anything, let alone a place that serves me cheap-ass food. I headed to a cart in front of 7 Hanover Square (at Pearl St.) on a mission to get their chicken curry ($5) that I had spotted a few days before. They serve it every day, but I guess it’s popular because when I ordered it around 1 p.m. I was sadly told that they were out of it. The guy who was manning the grills must have seen the crestfallen look on my face as I tried to figure out what else to get, and offered to cook up some chicken and put “gravy” on it for me. Read on to see how this improvised street meat turned out. Read more »

There are a few diners downtown, but not many make me want to go inside. Every time I’ve walked by the Roxy Coffee Shop on John St. (btw. Nassau & Broadway) I’ve wanted to eat there. Its red retro sign would beckon to me, and the small space just looked interesting. And then it got a makeover recently, which is sometimes the kiss of death for any restaurant, diner or otherwise. Besides, aren’t diners and coffee shops supposed to be slightly frayed around the edges? Well, since I didn’t eat there before the renovation I can’t report on if the food quality or prices have changed. What I can report is that it’s like stepping into a small town where the proprietor, a very chatty guy, will sit down at your table and talk to you like he did with the ladies in the booth next to mine. And the daily special that I tried was freaking awesome.  Read more »

Some days when I’m deciding what to have for lunch, I want something specific like a plain slice of pizza. The day I went to Nu Sushi on Pearl St. (btw. Hanover & Broad) was not one of those days. I wanted a little bit of a few things, so in my mind the obvious choice was a bento box. Downtown lunch’er boomshanka had recommended the reastaurant’s bento in the forums as one of his go-to lunches. Nu Sushi is located in a strip of pricey restaurants near Hanover Square that barely offer anything under $10, but all of their bentos fall into that category. The only catch is that you have to get it to go, because if you eat in, the price goes up to $14.50 for some reason. So, let’s see what was inside this box, shall we? Read more »

There’s a strange complex of restaurants on Fulton Street that I’ve never ventured into, including a subterranean Thai place, a Chinese restaurant, a Russian bath and restaurant, and Tandoor Palace. I had my eye on the goat biryani at Tandoor, but I was feeling a little under the weather the day I went and instead went for one of the the steam table combos so I could get in and out a little quicker without sneezing on anyone. The ordering process is slightly confusing, and the workers kept slightly yelling at me asking what I wanted (My predecessor Kevin had a similar experience at Bangal Curry on Church St.), but I finally made a decision and yelled my order right back. See where all the yelling took place, after the jump.  Read more »