Midtown Lunch

Normally we keep this site focused on lunch, but an event featuring $1 slices of pizza happening downtown after work cannot be ignored. Slice Out Hunger is happening on Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at St. Anthony’s Church which is in Soho at Sullivan St. & W. Houston. A bunch of pizzerias donate pies, you buy tokens at the door for $1 slices, and all of the proceeds go to City Harvest. A bunch of Downtown Lunch favorites will be there like Prince St. Pizza, Da Mikele, Farinella, Ben’s of Soho and Rubirosa as well as others from pizza places all over the city. You can find all of the information on it here and maybe want to save some room at lunch tomorrow.

Lunch’er Serene wrote in earlier this week to let us know that another Mexican food truck’s been parking in the nether regions of the Financial District. Sure enough, Tacos El Idolo which some of you may know from its usual spot in Chelsea has started parking at Pearl St. & Whitehall. This is likely good news for those of you whose Mexican food options near Bowling Green until now have included Chipotle, Mad Dog & Beans and terrible deli burritos. Click through for a look at the menu and what Serene said about the food she and a co-worker got from the truck. Read more »

Ever since Sushi by Bento Nouveau (which is now called Bento Sushi) remodeled its store at Broadway & Cortlandt St. I’ve been going there more frequently, mostly for udon soup or one of the protein over rice dishes. The other day when a craving for sushi hit I couldn’t be bothered to go to a restaurant and wait for food so instead decided to go check out Bento Sushi’s pre-made maki rolls. The place is constantly busy which is a good thing since the sushi you grab from the refrigerated case is likely to not have been sitting there long in frigid purgatory (where good sushi rice goes to die). I grabbed a sushi combo on one visit and later went back for a California roll. Sadly, it looks like the hot items are the way to go here rather than the sushi namesake.

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On a recent non-rainy day (seriously, why does it always start pouring at lunch time?) I finally was able to take a walk up to the All Good Things market on Franklin St. (at Church) to see what they had to eat for an actual lunch. Some of you don’t think doughnuts or ice cream count as a real meal, so I was after something of the sandwich or soup variety. There aren’t a ton of options, but three of the vendors – Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, Cavaniola’s Gourmet Cheese Shop and the fish purveyor/farm stand – have a small selection of sandwiches and soups. Dickson’s has started serving chili for the colder months, but I decided to save that for winter and instead grabbed a baguette sandwich from Cavaniola’s.

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Those of you who were sad when R. Retha’s Cart disappeared after getting shuttered by the Department of Health should probably just stop reading this post now because it contains no good news. Yesterday, the owners of the Jamaican Dutchy Truck posted on Twitter that they had a cart for sale, with the above photo attached featuring the telltale Jamaican flag flying from the top. It wasn’t looking good when the cart’s parking spot at William & Beaver was taken over by a halal food vendor, but here’s hoping another outfit buys it (the Cinnamon Snail Truck owners seemed interested) and we get to reap the benefits.

Many people wanting lunch from a cart tend to gravitate toward the collection on Broadway between Liberty and Cedar streets, but some more interesting options can be found a few blocks away on William St. The stretch between Maiden Lane and John St. is home to a smoothie cart, fruit seller along with a Biryani House cart and Halal Gyro Express which serve an interesting mix of street meat, falafel, biryani, kati rolls and some Afghani dishes. A while ago a new cart called NY Express Biryani started parking right across William St. from Biryani House serving some of the same dishes including kati rolls, biryani and chicken tikka. It wasn’t until yesterday that I walked by, though, and noticed a substantial lunchtime line outside NY Express Biryani so I thought I should finally post about its presence. Have any of you eaten there? Is the food worth crossing the street for?

NY Express Biryani Cart, corner of William & John streets

Sometimes curiousity gets the best of me and I end up eating something that I know full well is probably going to be terrible. You see, I love a good banh mi, even if I have to shell out more than $5 for it. A good sandwich is a good sandwich and sometimes you have to pay more than rock bottom Chinatown prices, especially in the Financial District. The thing is, though, that we have several sources of Vietnamese sandwiches in the area that are actually good so when a chain steps up and sells something called a banh mi, it had better be solid. Yushi on Pearl St. (btw. Maiden & Pine) tried its best, but really they should just stick with their Yu Bowls and overpriced dumplings and leave the sandwich game to someone else. After the jump I will tell you what happens when you try to make a Vietnamese sandwich with sourdough bread.

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