Midtown Lunch

A week ago, we had a brief post about the start of the Street Vendor Project’s new interview series in which they’ll profile various street vendors around the city.  The inaugural interview happened to profile a gentleman by the name of Tesfalum Kiflu who hails from Eritrea and happens to be cooking out of a truck fairly close to City Hall.  Reading his words, I couldn’t help but focus in on two in particular: Eritrean stew.  I am all about trying new things and eating unusual foods.  Stew may be common enough, but it’s the modifier here that caught my attention.  Eritrean.  I’d be willing to bet that most folks in this country don’t even know what continent Eritrea is on (it’s Africa), let alone the characteristics of the indigenous stew.  So I did what any sensible, hungry, curious young man would do and made my way up Nassau St. to Ann St. to order one of Mr. Kiflu’s stews.

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A few weeks ago, I announced a continuing mission of mine while writing for this site: to find the best street meat downtown.  This week, the journey continues.  But first, I want to thank everyone who posted street meat recommendations last time around.  With the launch of this new site, the focus is going to be all on you Downtowners and great new places for you to eat.  As much as I feel I have to share with you, I know I’m gonna miss more spots than I nail.  So please, if at any time in my tenure here you’ve got an awesome place you think people should know about, just shout it out. Let me know what you’re thinking and I’ll do my best to get it done.

With that being said, on the sage advice of one chris6sigma, I took the fight back to the streets this week and went to check out Adel’s located on the corner of Maiden Lane and Front Street.

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Seth – fellow downtowner, lunch enthusiast, trusted advisor, and soon-to-be profile subject – made a really good point to me recently about midtown vs. downtown lunching: While midtown has the advantage in quantity, variety, and value of eats, downtown has some really terrific and beautiful places to dine.

More on this in general soon, but one place that’s just a nice place to sit and eat is Perle Restaurant and Wine Bar on Pearl Street near Broad. Much of the menu is over $10 and not Lunch’er fare, but I wandered in the other day and found a very tasty Croque Monsiuer for $8.

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Does this photo even look like it was taken in New York? I think you’ll agree that the very fast food-like facade of Planet Gyro on Rector Street is not terribly enticing, but I’ll leave no stone unturned for you hungry Lunch’ers.

Yelpers seem to hate Planet Gyro with a fiery passion. I try not to put too much stake in Yelp ratings as a general rule, but in this case, I totally don’t understand where those folks were coming from.

As with Express BBQ, there were some red flags beyond the entrance, most notably a number of “creative” gyros on the menu, but there was also a spit loaded up with some very juicy-looking lamb. I took the plunge, ordered my gyro, and was quite pleased.  What’s the story, Yelpers?

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My new gig as your humble  downtown grub correspondent has gotten me paying close attention to every storefront I pass, even on blocks I’ve walked down a thousand times. For three years, Tokyo Kitchen on John Street between Broadway and Nassau has somehow managed to tuck itself into my culinary blind spot. No more.

Once I took a closer look, this narrow Japanese joint seemed like a Lunch’ers dream find: Tiny. Ethnic. A little grubby. Busy. Bilingual. Jackpot.

Well, kind of.  My first dish from here–chicken katsu don–left me unimpressed, but I was so grabbed by the aesthetic of this place that I had to give it another shot. I am happy to report that Tokyo Kitchen redeemed themselves with their udon, and that I’ll be back to explore the rest of this menu soon.

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Korean food has to be one of my most favorite cuisines of all time.  Good soup? Check.  Awesome BBQ? Check.  An affinity for fiery condiments and sauces? Check and check.  So the first time I had even heard that there was such a thing as Korean fried chicken, there was no decision making to be done. It was simply a matter of dropping what I was doing and proceeding to the nearest purveyor of that delicious, crispy treat.  That place happened to be what was once Bon Chon on the corner of 32^nd and 5^th Ave.  Even though it’s now still essentially the same thing, a little part of me died the day they closed their doors.  So you can imagine how thrilled (and I do mean thrilled) I was to find that Bon Chon had moved in practically next door to my workplace.  There could be no waiting.  Lunchtime was now. Read more »

Southerners like myself would claim that we have high standards when it comes to barbecue. Other people might say we’re jerks about it.

In fact, I was so righteous about this Holy Grail of down south cuisine when I first moved north nearly a decade ago, I would constantly correct my friends when they referred to a weekend cookout as a barbecue. I’ve relaxed a lot about it since then (and probably kept more friends as a result), but I am still very choosy about pulled pork, my native South Carolina’s barbecue of choice.

So it was with great skepticism that I unwrapped my pulled pork sandwich from Express BBQ on the corner of Park Place and Church St. But – Daggum it, y’all! – not only did the pork well exceed my very low expectations, it might even be called good…

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