Midtown Lunch

Sometimes it’s a Chinese noodle soup kind of day – as yesterday with it’s clouds and rain was – and it gave me an excuse to check out one of the impressive roster of noodle soups at Ho Yip on Liberty St. (at Trinity Pl.). Yip’s seems to get all of the cheap Chinese noodle soup glory in the Financial District with its two locations, but Ho Yip’s selection blows theirs out of the water. I haven’t sampled the noodle soups from every Chinese hole-in-the-wall in the FiDi, but Ho Yip served me a version with some fabulous wontons.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love a good plate of chicken over rice with ample hot sauce and white sauce, but sometimes you want something different. That’s why I was intrigued when A-Pou’s Taste Cart at Liberty St. & Broadway started serving a special of basil chicken with white rice, adding to their strong lineup of Taiwanese potstickers and Chinese spaghetti. I’ve basically loved everything I’ve ever gotten from this cart (plus the woman who works there is super nice), and it’s so nice to have an alternative to the halal cart overload happening on the Liberty Plaza. But would basil chicken from a cart be any good? Could it surpass the potstickers?

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Some days you just need some greasy Americanized Chinese food with a heaping side of rice, am I right? This happened to me the other day and while mentally going through my catalogue of nearby places to procure some sauced meat I remembered Dumpling House, which is easy to forget since it’s in that weird one-block alley between Maiden Lane & Liberty St. I’d been there once after it replaced Win Won, and appalled at the crappy and expensive dumplings I got, although I shouldn’t have been surprised. This time I did as everyone else who goes here does and got the $8 lunch special that includes a protein, rice and soup or a drink.

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The gates were down at Goodies on Fulton St. (at Gold) and I wasn’t exactly reassured by a sign in the window saying they would reopen soon. In a good news, bad news situation, Goodies has indeed bitten the dust, taking its menu of things you might expect to find in Chinatown and not the Financial District with it. Lunch’er Seaweed noted that signage had gone up for its replacement called Asian Wok. During a walk by today, it didn’t appear they were actually open, but a new menu was hanging in the window and as I feared it’s full of the usual Americanized Chinese suspects without any dim sum selections in sight. I guess it’s the only Chinese food option in that area if you don’t want to walk up to Yip’s on William St. This is one of the sadder closings in recent memory and I guess there will have to be more treks up to Chinatown now.

There are two new restaurants in the city serving food from the Yunnan region of China, and one of them happens to be in Tribeca. Lotus Blue opened on Reade St. (at W. Broadway) to little fanfare and I initially dismissed it because there wasn’t anything on the dinner menu for $10 or less. When I looked at the lunch menu, though, I was happy to see three items within our cheap budget including a smoked tofu with rice dish and two different kinds of buns. The latter sounded the most intriguing and I think you’ll want to check these out if you work nearby.

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I can’t remember the last time I got a lunch for less than $10 from a place where the greeters wear suits. Au Mandarin in the World Financial Center is a hybrid of classy Chinese food being served to finance workers in a food court. If you look at the signboard in front of the restaurant, you’ll notice a piece of paper announcing an $8.95 lunch special which seems like a good deal since everything on the menu is more than $10. The catch is there’s only one dish for the special every day and you have to go around the corner to the cheapskate’s entrance to get it from a lady at a steam table. Read more »

Have you ever thought, “I could really go for some momo for lunch today,” but instead had to settle for potstickers or some other substitute? If you work downtown, there really aren’t many non-Chinese or Japanese dumpling options but with Chinese Mirch’s new truck, that’s changed. The menu is pretty limited to either chicken or vegetable momo, plain ($4), over rice or in a stew called thukpa, or a trio of duck bao (all $8). Being something of a dumpling freak I opted for the vegetable momo rice bowl with spicy Manchurian sauce. The twist with the truck is it was served over basmati rice for an Indian twist and the momo and thukpa are more of Tibetan staples than Chinese. Regardless, my lunch from Chinese Mirch was so good I didn’t even apologize for stinking up my office with it.

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