Midtown Lunch

I’m not usually one to have a liquid lunch unless you count milkshakes, so when I kept seeing Twitter posts from Frites N Meats about their Kobe beef burger doused in Maker’s Mark I was not particularly intrigued. But then a burger craving hit, the truck was downtown, and I figured it was time to taste some high-quality meat steeped in booze while sitting on a park bench. Was this a better vehicle for a lunchtime drink than a flask? Click through to find out.

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There are a lot of lunch places that try to make you seem like a better, more healthful person by eating there and it’s rare I step into these places. However, I’m not above trying a place that proudly declares it’s organic and serves food that just might make me live an extra day if there’s some intriguing reason to. When I saw a post about the Katchkie Truck, permanently parked in the lot behind City Winery (site of this ML’s Fifth AnniversaryParty!) I was intrigued. They’re open five days a week for lunch and the menu sounded simple and tasty, with all of the food coming from an organic farm upstate that also sells at farmers markets and has a catering company in the city. Lots of greens and grains straight ahead.

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Just yesterday I counted three trucks focusing on burgers in a two-block radius, including the newish Wall St. Burgers Truck (the other two were La Cense & GO Burger). Wall St. has been around for a couple of weeks, but ironically they only park in the Financial District a couple of days a week.  Click through for a look at the menu.

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I knew before heading out to the new Shake Shack on Murray St. (btw. West & N. End Ave.) in Battery Park City that I would be in for a wait. As I walked up I could see the mass of people waiting from a block away and steeled myself. Although I did have to wait in line for 30 minutes, and then wait a bit longer for food, I’d have to say they were ready for the crowds. And I rewarded myself for my wait by ordering one of the downtown-themed concretes. Read more »

I was kind of amazed to discover that the Wall St. Burger Shoppe has never been reviewed on this site. Sure, if you want a full lunch there you’re either going to approach the ML price wall or go over it. I for one would much rather do this than eat a crappy fast food burger (Five Guys excepted from this category, of course), and sometimes you just don’t want to eat in a bar for your burger fix. They also have some crazy burgers for $7 or more on their own. But if you get their “junior deal” or one of their daily specials you can get out of there for $10 or less and not feel ripped off.

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Here’s a confession: I’ve always wanted to eat at the Pearl St. Diner based solely on its sign. You just don’t find places with awesome neon signs like that anymore. Plus, whenever I walk by its location on Pearl (at Fletcher) it always looked packed with a diverse crowd of people and it just seemed like a good place for solo dining. On one of our many recent days of gross weather, I headed over because clearly eating outside was not going to happen and there aren’t a ton of places in the FiDi to have a sit-down lunch within ML price guidelines. Off I went with visions of greasy diner food dancing in my head. Read more »

The Go Burger Truck debuted a while ago and is parked semi-permanently on Front St. at the South Street Seaport, and to be honest I really had a hard time drumming up enthusiasm. You might say that I have reached fancy burger fatigue, and also, I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around a $5 (single, unadorned) hamburger from a truck. It doesn’t help that much like the La Cense Burger Truck (which incidentally, is parked a few blocks away at the end of Wall St.) it’s essentially a billboard for a product, which in this case is the BLT restaurants.  I had an even harder time drumming up excitement after a Five Guys opened just a short walk up Fulton St. Then there was the, shall we say, “scathing” review on Blondie & Brownie in which the food was so bad it ended up in the trash.

On a particularly indecisive day, I figured it was time to eat one of the Go burgers and find out if it was worth the cost and hype. Find out my verdict after the jump. Read more »