Midtown Lunch

I’ve eaten a lot of things that are hard to take tasty-looking pictures of – i.e. every Indian steam table lunch ever – but when I took the lid off my latest Korean meal from Cafe Hanover on Hanover Sq. (at Pearl) my heart sank a little because it looked pretty unappealing. By that I mean it looked like there was an oil spill all over some udon noodles, and that became my introduction to the dish called jja jang myun on their menu, also known as jajangmyeon.

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My first experience with the Chinese food at Goodies on Fulton St. (at Gold) was a great one so when the craving for noodle soup hit the other day I knew exactly where I was going. The hard part once I got there was deciding which kind to get, and then whether to get noodles or rice cakes in it. Thankfully the woman who’s always manning the tiny dining room had some time on her hands as the place was empty due to the torrential rain outside. When asked, she confirmed that this is indeed the same Goodies that used to be in Chinatown and based upon my second go-round with their food it’s definitely our gain.

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It’s that time of year when everything smells like hot garbage and cold lunches start to sound good. Yesterday was a scorcher and at first I was thinking a sandwich sounded good for lunch. But then I remembered that a new location of Xi’an Famous Foods had opened on Bayard St. (btw. Mott & Elizabeth) and that they had a few cold noodle dishes. This immediately sounded like a way better idea than a sandwich so I made my way to the J train for the first time in a long time and headed up to Chinatown.

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There is no scientific evidence that eating fried foods in soup will make you feel better but I’m just going to pretend this is true. Also, I know doing a post on soup when it’s 70 degrees outside isn’t exactly logical either but I’ve been under the weather and thought it would be an opportune time to sneak one more hot food post in before that starts to sound disgusting. With my head in a fog I was thinking of possible places to get soup and for some reason Cafe Hanover came to mind since I knew they had a section devoted to udon and soba. And nothing cures you better than noodles, salty broth and fried protein!

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It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but a good cheap lunch is not often found on a cobblestone street surrounded by designer clothing shops. Yet this is where Kelley & Ping is on Greene St. (btw. Prince & W. Houston), on a block that you probably wouldn’t walk down unless you were looking to spend a paycheck. Lunch’er Alexandra tipped me off to it and a look at the menu was a little shocking because most of the dishes were less than $10. Not since finding the lunch special at Peep have I been happy to head somewhere other than Chinatown for some Asian food.

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Making Downtown office workers jealous is something this blog has been doing for awhile now. To even the score, I’ve brought on Daniel Krieger as an official Downtown Lunch Correspondent to write up some of the tasty stuff you can get in the lower half of Manhattan. He’s a great photographer (insuring good food porn), but more importantly he is a lover of cheap, unique and delicious eats (or as I like to call it- Midtown Lunch’ish food).

How are you supposed to find the right Chinatown spot for a cheap lunch that is going to be better than the 100 other similar spots dotted on a downtown map? Well you can read this column every Friday to start. Or you can ask friends who work in the Chinatown area, which is what I did to find the Excellent Pork Chop House. I asked a friend of mine what her favorite place was for lunch and she immediately said, “Excellent Pork Chop House” on Doyers street. The name of the place is pretty confident and clear. If you go there you gotta try the pork chop because well, it’s probably going to be excellent. If it isn’t they should change the name to something else.   Read more »