Midtown Lunch

I know we haven’t reported on the closure of Five Guys, but most of you have probably realized it closed along with all of the other ground-floor businesses in that building on Fulton St. due to a condo development. The good news is that soon we’ll be getting a Smashburger on William St. (nr. Fulton) in the space that housed Yips. There’s one other NYC location of the Colorado-based chain in downtown Brooklyn and in addition to smashed burgers they also have chicken sandwiches, salads and shakes. It looks like there will also be one burger concoction unique to the Financial District location.

I have never eaten a Vietnamese breakfast, but if I did I’d want it to be the egg and pork roll banh mi from the No. 1 Banh Mi Cart. We’ve eaten most of the conventional fillings from this cart but there are usually eight to 10 on offer and some (sardines in sunflower oil, roasted eel, tuna fish) are more on the edge. There was breakfast served at the cart for a time, and I’d like to think the pork roll and egg sandwich ($7) on the lunch menu is a legacy of that.  Read more »

When Diso’s Sandwich Society truck debuted downtown in June and then decamped to Midtown before I got a chance to try their food, I was disappointed but assumed they would come back to the Financial District. I was mostly wrong (they have come back a couple of times although not regularly), but on Wednesday I noticed on Twitter that they would be at Varick & Charlton. This was finally my chance to stuff my face with an Italian sandwich from a truck!

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There are many delis and other eateries that I’ve walked by many times but never bothered to step inside. That’s usually OK, but sometimes you find a gem that you would never tell existed from the outside. Corte Cafe at the corner of Lafayette and Duane streets is such a place, advertising only “international foods” on its awning. A step inside shows the usual salads and sandwiches, but you can also get fried chicken, a torta or a variety of Caribbean food. It was the latter that piqued my interest since the area around City Hall is lacking in the food of the islands.

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Soma By Nature has been a standby for Korean food in the Financial District with sushi and a few other Japanese offerings pushed to the side. On Friday I noticed they have changed the name to BentOn Cafe (of which there is a location in Midtown), although the sign promoting the $6 Korean lunch specials remained outside. What has changed is a rack of grab and go bento boxes and Japanese sweets prominently featured near the Korean food station.

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We have no shortage of carts selling falafel in the Financial District, but it’s a little hit or miss and often you get specimens that have been previously fried and are mushy, room temperature and greasy. After I reviewed the GoGo Grill cart’s pulled pork sandwich one of you suggested I check out their falafel. They have a fryer on the cart, which is always a good sign.  Read more »

We’ve sampled the pork chop of Excellent Pork Chop House, as well as one of the noodle soups, but that was a long time ago in 2008. The Doyers St. institution now has its own Web site and pretty much everyone knows about it. The classics here are pork chop or chicken leg over rice with pickled mustard greens, but I had a hankering for rice cakes and saw that this restaurant had a decent selection. The version with shredded pork piqued my interest and off I went to carbo load.

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