Midtown Lunch

The Morris Grilled Cheese Truck has been on the streets for a while, but remained outside Midtown Lunch: Downtown radar because they never really parked down here. Last week they made an appearance at the World Financial Center food truck lot and yesterday they were parked in the Financial District and there was no line as people opted for indoor lunch destinations on account of the rain. I stopped by to check out the menu, which you can see after the jump.

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There are two new restaurants in the city serving food from the Yunnan region of China, and one of them happens to be in Tribeca. Lotus Blue opened on Reade St. (at W. Broadway) to little fanfare and I initially dismissed it because there wasn’t anything on the dinner menu for $10 or less. When I looked at the lunch menu, though, I was happy to see three items within our cheap budget including a smoked tofu with rice dish and two different kinds of buns. The latter sounded the most intriguing and I think you’ll want to check these out if you work nearby.

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There was quite a lot happening on Water St. between Maiden Lane and Pine yesterday, with the return of Nio’s Trinidad Roti Truck and a new cart called Indian Biryani Delights spotted on that block. The man working at the cart confirmed it’s brand new and will be parking in the same spot daily. There’s meat and vegetable biryani for $5.99 as well as regular street meat, kati rolls and (according to the sign) chapli kebabs. It seems to be something of a cursed place to park as the second A-Pou’s Taste cart was parked here, but now seems to have disappeared, and Fun Buns only lasted a couple of days selling its pork and beef buns before finding somewhere else to park. I hope this cart has more luck. Go try some biryani everyone!

I can’t remember the last time I got a lunch for less than $10 from a place where the greeters wear suits. Au Mandarin in the World Financial Center is a hybrid of classy Chinese food being served to finance workers in a food court. If you look at the signboard in front of the restaurant, you’ll notice a piece of paper announcing an $8.95 lunch special which seems like a good deal since everything on the menu is more than $10. The catch is there’s only one dish for the special every day and you have to go around the corner to the cheapskate’s entrance to get it from a lady at a steam table. Read more »

A Lunch’er alerted me to a little Caribbean turf war that happened yesterday when Nio’s Trinidad Roti truck park on Water St. near Pine, right in front of the plaza where Veronica’s Kitchen cart has sat for years on Front St. The menus looked somewhat similar with various meats served with peas and rice, along with roti (there weren’t prices posted, so no idea if they’re comparable). A search of the Web shows that Nio’s parked down on Front St. for many years serving three kinds of roti and doubles alongside the meat and rice dishes. The truck appears to be a mobile version of a brick and mortar roti shop on Church Ave. in Brooklyn. Did any of you eat at the truck yesterday or when it used to be down in the Financial District ages ago?

There’s been no shortage of food trucks serving tacos appearing over the last couple of years, but nearly all of them have been fused with some other cuisine. We now have tacos mixed with BBQ, Korean, Japanese and tofu edamame falafel, but sometimes you just need a taco filled with deliciously-spiced pork. The Mexico Blvd. truck is where to go when you want a straightforward taco that you might encounter in Mexico, and as I found on a recent visit, they’re representing just fine.

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There are now two cheap eats spots on a grimy stretch of Canal St., with a branch of $1 pizza spot Roll And Go and the recent addition of Black Burger right next to each other at the corner of West Broadway. Both places were clogged with high school students and because Black Burger is little more than a counter with a couple of stools for eating, it doesn’t take much for the line to stretch out the door. Inside, you’ll find a simple menu of either single or double hamburgers or cheeseburgers (fresh, never frozen!), fries and shakes with a grilled cheese and calamari fries thrown in for good measure. And beware the warning on the wall: “Once you go Black, you never go back.”

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