Midtown Lunch

After seemingly interminable construction, the downtown branch of Baoguette has finally opened on Maiden Lane between Broadway and Nassau. And boy am I glad to have them. I had actually never tried Baoguette before last week, and I have to say I’m impressed. Their sandwiches are big, affordable, and delicious. The Baoguette on Lex btw. 25+26th is already Zach-tested, Zach-approved, and though I will miss the Klatch coffee shop that it replaced, this branch is a very welcome addition to our lunchtime area.

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I don’t know if you noticed, but winter arrived. I’m not quite sure when exactly, but I distinctly remember the biting cold of the wind sweeping through any number of skyscraper-formed wind tunnels and catching my swiftly frozen ass completely off guard. I would let out a meek moan, turn my shoulder into the gust, and do my best not to slump over in submission to Jack Frost. That’s when I know it’s time to find some kind of piping hot liquid to pour down my gullet and warm me from the core. Soup is a very popular choice, of course, but to me it’s just not enough. There’s a reason why soup is almost invariably paired with a sandwich. It just doesn’t cut it. No, what I need is something meaty, something manly, something that makes me want to wear flannel and cut down trees. I’m in the mood for beef stew.

The place that has come recommended to me for beef stew time and again is The Country Café and it was high time I checked this place out. It’s located in the public space accessible from either Pine St. or Wall St. between William and Pearl Streets, right next door to Deutsche Bank. Inside there’s a decent sized plaza with tables and plenty of seating. If you can maneuver your way into one of the tables, don’t get up until you’re ready to leave. Those things are valuable real estate as many of them are taken up by chess players during the lunch hour. The Country Café is located right in the middle on the east side of the space, if you’re good with directions. If you’re not, it’s on the side with all the shops.

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When I encounter restaurants that are trying to be cool, I usually turn and run for the hills. Fancy fonts, aggressive graphic designs, and cutely-named dishes are big red flags in my book, and I have a general rule that the more bells and whistles a restaurant has on its website, the worse its food is going to be. If you’re spending time on Flash animating a dancing cat in a chef’s hat rather than on perfecting your food, you need to get out of the restaurant business.

So by all rights Swich on Maiden Lane near Gold Street should have scared me off. The design screams “WE ARE A TRENDY PLACE TO GET A SANDWICH!” The menu offers “Deconstructed” sandwiches instead of salads. The website features a cartoon history of the place. Danger, Will Robinson!

But “the exception proves the rule,” as idiots are fond of saying. Despite the worrisome signs, Swich delivers interesting and well-made food that’s worth checking out.

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I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but Zach gave us Downtown Lunch’ers a beautiful gift this holiday season: our very own section in the forums. We’re working on getting them up to speed, but boomshanka has already started a great topic of discussion regarding what our “Go To” lunch spots are in the Financial District. Since I work right in the heart of the FiDi, I’ve got a sizeable list going already, but managed to pick up a few new ones from this thread. One mode de cuisine that people seemed to be confounded by down here is Thai food. Well, consider this my contribution to that particular thread and let me introduce Budtharasa on Washington St. between Rector and Carlisle.

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Egg Salad does not get a whole lot of love here on Midtown Lunch. In fact, there’s little about this old lunchtime workhorse on the site beyond this post on the forum sending those seeking egg salad to Ess-a-Bagel or Eisenberg’s.  And I can understand why. Bad egg salad is truly awful, and most egg salad out there is bad egg salad. I love egg salad that I’ve made myself when I can keep the mayonnaise level under control, but I almost never order it when I’m eating out.

Unless there’s a really good reason to, and the relatively new Jou Jou Café at Nassau St. and Maiden Lane offers up just such a reason: Their egg salad is not just any egg salad. It’s Israeli egg salad.

Hell yes.

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I went back to the basics this week to try and find the Financial District’s equivalent of the street meat all-stars reigning over Midtown we hear so much about. It’s always “Famous Halal Guys” this and “Trini-Paki Boys” that. Well when’s it gonna be our turn? When are we gonna have a Halal cart to make the Midtowners drool? This is the mission I’ve taken upon myself: to find the best Halal cart downtown. It will be difficult, but I am willing to sacrifice many a lunch break in this treacherous journey. And I shall not rest until I have found that cart.

*Ahem* Right. So, the cart that caught my eye this round is called Ruchi Cafe on Maiden Lane between William and Nassau. I’ve been keeping an out for any stirrings at the downtown Baoguette location at 9 Maiden Lane and when I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary a couple weeks ago, I took a wander down the road and stumbled across this cart. I didn’t remember seeing it there before so I took a gamble on a rainy day to see what I could come up with.

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Yips could be a Manhattan restaurant empire, or “yip” could just be a Chinese word for restaurant. I am absolutely clueless. Either way, there are a lot of them. There’s the Yips that Zach wrote about in Midtown (plus Ho Yip), and The Google has listings for three Yip’s downtown as well a Yip’s Dragon Style Kung Fu on the Lower East Side. So while there’s nothing apparently “Dragon Style” about the Yip’s Restaurant on Beaver St. between Broadway and Broad, its sprawling pay-by-the-pound buffet is chock full of ways for cheap Chinese addicts to get their fix.

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