Midtown Lunch

While heading to lunch yesterday I spotted a brightly-hued new cart at the corner of Pearl St. & Hanover Sq. It’s called The Squeeze, and serves fancy juices (my eyes glazed over after I saw the $8.95 price tag), along with something called “living lattes” and some raw vegan breakfast and lunch items including sandwiches, salads and some sort of hot dog involving kimchi. Click through to see how many food forms cashews can take!

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Last week I wasn’t feeling so great, and come lunch time visions of noodle soup were dancing in my head. Ramen was the first thing to come to mind, but there aren’t many great options down here that didn’t require me to walk many blocks on a cold day. Instead, I honed in on good old reliable Soma by Nature on William St. (btw. John & Fulton) with every intention of trying their ramen or udon soup, but then I saw something called dumpling rice cake soup which was described as “dumpling rice cake, drop egg in beef stock.” I had no idea what this meant, but I ordered myself some and prepared to find out.

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There aren’t a lot of Puerto Rican food options downtown unless you count Sandra’s Food Spot Cart on Nassau St. in the Financial District, or lump West Side Coffee Shop or Sophie’s Cuban together in that vague category of “Latin food.” There is, however, Sazon on Reade St. (btw. Church & W. Broadway) in Tribeca. Yes, it’s a fancy take on Puerto Rican food, but the lunch menu has a few options at the $10 or below mark. I decided to try out their take on the jibarito – the sandwich with fried plantains in place of bread – and was pretty happy with what I got.

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Last week’s cooler weather brought out the sweaters and also a lot of hearty seasonal specials at trucks and other lunch spots. Wafels & Dinges took the opportunity to add to its savory side with the winter addition of the corn waffle with either meat or vegetable chili along with some toppings. But would this $7 concoction be more of a lunch than one of their regular sweet waffle concoctions?

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Back in May after the Bob & Jo Truck started parking in the Financial District one day a week, I had a bulgogi sandwich that had a lot going for it, but was marred by too-chewy baguette. I haven’t been back because there are about a million other trucks hitting the area these days that consistently serve delicious food. On Tuesday (when the truck parks on Hanover Sq.), although the siren song of the many taco trucks crowding the lower FiDi was strong, I instead headed to Bob & Jo where a line of people was ordering rice plate after rice plate. Perhaps trying a baguette sandwich at a Korean food truck had been too risky a venture and the meat over rice was where it was at.

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Whenever a craving for something tasty and vegetarian hits, the usual suspects flow into my brain, namely any number of carts serving great falafel. Sometimes I want more than fried chickpea orbs, and the other day I decided to revisit Pita Express on Ann St. (btw. Nassau & B’way) because I remembered I’d had a phenomenal chicken pita sandwich there last year and had vowed to go back to try the delicious array of Israeli salads and dips behind glass at the counter. The glatt kosher restaurant wasn’t as busy as normal but that may have been because it was Friday heading into a long weekend. I ended up ordering a vegetarian sampler platter and despite telling myself I wouldn’t be able to eat everything and still function after lunch, I did anyway and it was worth it.

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Sometimes I get a premonition when I walk into a place that looks like it hasn’t been renovated in 20 years that they’re going to feed me good food. This happened at Rockwell’s last week. The handful of times I’ve walked past the deli on Broad St. (at Water), I’ve made a mental note that they have a $5.95 burger, fries and soda deal advertised in the window but never got around to actually trying it. A craving for greasy food hit so I finally went to see what $6 gets you. The answer: A fair amount of food, a surprisingly decent burger (that you definitely need to customize) and mediocre fries.

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