Midtown Lunch

I’m not quite sure why the stretch of Broadway bordering Tribeca is getting all of the $1 slice love, but those of us working elsewhere downtown are jealous. Roll and Go opened a location at Broadway & Franklin trafficking in pizza, gyro and breakfast sandwiches and last week Joey’s Pepperoni Pizza opened a block up the street at Broadway & White selling only slices and the odd Jamaican patty. I decided that cheap pizza was just what I needed for lunch and staged an impromptu matchup between the two places. One of them came out the clear winner, but you’ll have to click through to see what $2 worth of pizza looks and tastes like.

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Midtown contributor Brian wrote in yesterday to tell me about a new truck called Our Heros that he spotted at Wall St. & Water. The menu is salads and hot and cold hero sandwiches, but the kicker is that the workers are dressed in military regalia! The word is that they’ll be in the Financial District permanently (unless they take someone’s spot). A look at the non-patriotic menu after the jump. Read more »

Places that do Asian fusion food often serve mediocre food since they have enormous menus bouncing around between Japanese, Thai and/or Chinese. Hana on Nassau St. is a place I’ve walked by many, many times but never thought to go inside due to the fact that they have three separate menus for each of these cuisines and I just don’t have the patience to decide what I would want off of these. That problem was solved for me though when a handwritten sign appeared in the window one day promoting beef stew specials. I wasn’t exactly sure what an Asian place would do with this staple of my childhood, but I wanted to find out.

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Earlier this year I checked out Sabor de Mexico on Trinity Place (at Thames) back when it was Caliente Mexican Grill. I’m not sure why they changed the name, but they were serving a decent burrito and some Americanized tacos at a price comparable to their closest comparison, Chipotle. I was mostly impressed by the fact that the sauces and everything seemed to be made from scratch although I could be wrong about that. Since I never went back after that initial visit I figured I would check in and see if they’d added anything to the menu and if the quality had changed (it did).

My test of this was ordering fajitas ($7.95) and what I got wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it did lead me to discover that they are cooking up some fine meats.

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I can’t say I’ve ever actively searched for a way to combine chorizo and ground beef into one delicious lunch, but when I saw the frita on the menu at the Bongo Brothers truck (which is at Old Slip & Water today), I knew it must be mine. This monster melds those two types of meat into a patty, and showers them with those shoestring potatoes that come in a can and sauteed onions and then adds some ketchup so you don’t have to. This all sounded marvelous, but how would it taste? Was this going to be too much meaty goodness to handle?

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A couple of weeks ago we reported that kosher food hall Milk Street Cafe on Wall St. (nr. William) was on the verge of closing after a sharp decline in people eating there, and now it looks like that’s becoming a reality. They’ll close the doors for good after today. There was a whole lot of fanfare when the place opened in June, giving those who keep kosher a place where they could actually sit and eat lunch and didn’t only sell falafel. In the months since then the presence of barricades has increased on the street outside the restaurant due to Occupy Wall St., and Milk Street’s owner said that was the main reason for a 30% drop in business. Now the massive space will be empty, and hopefully not filled by some terrible chain restaurant. I only ate at Milk Street once when it opened, but were any of you regular customers who are going to miss this place?

There are so many small cafes in Soho that it’s hard to distinguish which of them could possibly have food that’s not expensive without scouring their menus. I recently saw a couple of reviews of sandwiches at Fiat Cafe on Mott St. (nr. Spring) on Serious Eats and while the visuals didn’t blow my mind, the prices were pretty unbelievable for the neighborhood. It’s pretty rare to find a great, filling sandwich here for less than a 10 spot, but Fiat Cafe’s top out at $7.50 – even the ones with meat on them! I could definitely get behind this place.

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