Midtown Lunch

As I was headed to lunch yesterday I spotted a truck I hadn’t seen before parked behind the Desi Food Truck on Hanover Sq. It turned out to be Valducci’s Pizza and after a look at their Twitter feed it seems they’re an offshoot of a Staten Island pizza place and the truck is simply back on the streets after a long hiatus. But hey, it’s new to me! I was going to buy a slice, but just as I was about to do that a guy emerged from the truck with a pizza pan full of samples. Straight ahead for what a mini-slice looks like.

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The World Financial Center (and Battery Park City in general) is short on good, cheap lunch options so I’m sure many of you got excited when word got around that Caravelli’s Pizzeria was opening in the food court area. Anticipation built as word got around that one of the owners was Ed McFarland of Ed’s Lobster Bar fame who has a kiosk selling lobster rolls outside. Sure, pizza and seafood are pretty different foods, but how hard can it be to screw up bread, cheese, sauce and the occasional topping? Read more »

It’s not often you see a food truck with a calorie count listed on its menu, as I discovered Eddie’s Pizza Truck does when I finally got to eat one of its bar pies earlier in the week. (Really, no one wants to know how much those Korean tacos or kati rolls are adding to your waistline). Eddie’s clocks its cheese bar pie at 270 calories and that only encouraged me to add sausage to it. The truck returned to the Financial District after debuting downtown a year ago and then abandoning the weekly parking spot in favor of more busy pastures. The truck makes a stop every Friday on Hudson St. in SoHo, which is a hike to get to for me, so I stopped by to check out the $10 bar pie lunch special while it was within walking distance.

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Since we don’t have 2 Bros. Pizza way downtown the $1 slices that are common in other parts of the city are something of a novelty here. The newly-opened Roll And Go on Broadway (at Franklin) is the only place I’m aware of (other than craptastic Papa John’s) below Canal selling slices at this price. When I got there the place was packed, but since almost everyone was getting cheese slices they had a bunch ready to go and it wasn’t long before I had food in hand.

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Sometimes you see an idea involving food and realize it’s something that perhaps should be adopted more widely. That was the case when I saw the Slip Slice on the menu at Pizza Pizza on Pearl St. (nr. Stone), the sister restaurant to Burger Burger a couple of doors down. So what is this item? It involves two slices of pizza and extra cheese, but you’re going to have to click through for a visual.

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A lot of places open in SoHo and Nolita but it’s often sad scanning their menus because more often than not everything on them is $10 or more, even at lunch. There are ways around that by going vegetarian or ordering nothing but a sandwich but sometimes it’s nice to eat somewhere a little nicer but still at ML prices. Rubirosa opened on Mulberry (btw. Prince & Spring) – an outpost of a beloved Staten Island bar pie purveyor – but sadly the cheapest pizza on the menu is $14 for a small and there is no mention of slices. But then I saw that they were named the best slice of 2011, and that there was a way to get a cheap lunch here after all. Read more »

When you turn onto the block of Warren St. off of Broadway it’s pretty desolate and doesn’t look like the kind of place you would find anything good to eat. There aren’t even any street meat carts or hot dog vendors nearby, but you will be able to get your pen repaired at the Fountain Pen Hospital! Located on this weird block is Brick NYC, a newish pizza and Italian restaurant and wine bar that opened last year. It didn’t look like the kind of place that would have decent lunch specials, but after lunch’er James asked if I’d eaten there I took a look and discovered that most of the menu was $10 or less for lunch. And you don’t even have to bring someone along to share a pizza with.

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