Midtown Lunch

The Go Burger Truck debuted a while ago and is parked semi-permanently on Front St. at the South Street Seaport, and to be honest I really had a hard time drumming up enthusiasm. You might say that I have reached fancy burger fatigue, and also, I was having a hard time wrapping my brain around a $5 (single, unadorned) hamburger from a truck. It doesn’t help that much like the La Cense Burger Truck (which incidentally, is parked a few blocks away at the end of Wall St.) it’s essentially a billboard for a product, which in this case is the BLT restaurants.  I had an even harder time drumming up excitement after a Five Guys opened just a short walk up Fulton St. Then there was the, shall we say, “scathing” review on Blondie & Brownie in which the food was so bad it ended up in the trash.

On a particularly indecisive day, I figured it was time to eat one of the Go burgers and find out if it was worth the cost and hype. Find out my verdict after the jump. Read more »

It’s pretty rare that I step into a restaurant and feel like it might be a little too hip for my blood, because usually I avoid these places. The other day I wanted to go up to Soho for lunch, and looked for recommendations from some recent profiled lunch’ers who work in the area. Lunch’er Sherry had recommended Peep on Prince St. (btw. Thompson & Sullivan). Thai sounded good to me, and I was intrigued by the lunch special that gets you a choice of a bunch of appetizers and a main course for $7 or $8. Any place that doesn’t give you a crappy default soup with the lunch deal is OK in my book.

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I will admit that despite working downtown for more than two years, I have never eaten at L&L Hawaiian BBQ on Fulton St. (btw. Gold & Cliff). I’m not quite sure why, but I feel that deep in my mind I knew that eating lunch here would make me worthless for the rest of the afternoon at work. When Daniel checked it out last year he called it the “Hawaiian McDonald’s” and while he liked the roast duck and spare ribs all right, he wanted to go back to check out the curry chicken katsu. That sounded good to me, so I headed over with an empty stomach and dreams of Japanese-style fried meat in my head. Find out if the katsu was worth the food coma after the jump. Read more »

A few days ago I asked if anyone had eaten at the All American Diner I & II Truck that’s been parked in front of the 1 State St. building for a while now.  I’ve spotted it a few times on my fruitless search for the mythical Picnick Smoked truck, and there always seems to be a small crowd out front, which is always a good sign. None of you ML lunch’ers seemed to know that it existed, so I figured I should take one for the team and go eat something from there. It’s not your normal breed of truck, meaning they don’t use Twitter or have a Web site telling you about them, and it’s run by a husband and wife team that seem like they would be running an actual Mom & Pop diner somewhere.

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I’ve been on the lookout for cheap sushi downtown that doesn’t come from a grocery store…or Duane Reade. So when I grabbed a menu from the gritty-looking Shinjuku  on Church St. (at Park Place), I got all kinds of excited to discover they had a lunch special that was pretty damn inexpensive at two rolls plus salad or soup for $7.25. Clearly this was worth investigating. Read more »

Back in the day when Daniel was on the downtown beat, he checked out the street meat truck that’s always parked on Cedar at Broadway and christened it the Frito Lay Truck, because that’s what it was in it’s former life of ferrying tasty snacks. A week or two ago I noticed the truck had been officially named the Gyro House, maybe after one too many people came by in search of Lay’s potato chips. In addition to a name, the owners got extra fancy and added a seizure-inducing sign on the top advertising the wares (I swear the above photo was a complete accident, and did not encourage me to order lamb). Daniel seemed fairly satisfied with the chicken he got there, but I was in search of falafel and wondered how this truck’s would stack up to the heavy hitters Sam’s Falafel across the street and Alan’s Falafel on the plaza in front of the truck. Read more »

I’ve spotted the All American Diner I & II Truck in the Financial District a couple of times, but can never decide if there’s anything appealing enough for me to eat there. A couple of interesting things I spotted were the roast pork on garlic bread and a ridiculously cheap peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Has anyone gotten anything they would recommend from here? Or is it basically a generic deli on wheels?