Midtown Lunch

There will be some sad vegetarians in midtown (or sad cart mash-up lunch’ers), as the 99% Vegetarian Food Cart has moved downtown from its former spot on 52nd St. & 6th. I spotted the cart on Liberty St. (at Broadway), and the guys working there said they’d been there since Monday.

It seems things like the hassles with the hot dog carts finally got to them. For those downtown uninitiated with this cart (and wondering why it’s only 99% vegetarian), they mostly serve vegetarian fare…but also chicken. It’s definitely the fanciest cart to be parked in that area, but I could see a combo from the 99% Vegetarian and Alan’s Falafel carts in my future.

More mobile sweets are coming to the South Street Seaport, with Cupcake Stop bringing a new truck to Pier 17 at Fulton St. starting Thursday.  If you are truly a cupcake addict and a freeloader, then you can take a picture of the truck roving around the city from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today or Wednesday and send it to the truck via Twitter or Facebook to win four of their classic cupcakes. The cupcakes join a permanent cart from Wafels & Dinges that launched a couple of weeks ago. This only means that more tourists on a sugar high will make their way into Abercrombie & Fitch.

It’s not often I get in on naming anything, let alone a place that serves me cheap-ass food. I headed to a cart in front of 7 Hanover Square (at Pearl St.) on a mission to get their chicken curry ($5) that I had spotted a few days before. They serve it every day, but I guess it’s popular because when I ordered it around 1 p.m. I was sadly told that they were out of it. The guy who was manning the grills must have seen the crestfallen look on my face as I tried to figure out what else to get, and offered to cook up some chicken and put “gravy” on it for me. Read on to see how this improvised street meat turned out. Read more »

Midtown Lunch’er dkriese tipped me off that a new Japanese bakery was opening on Murray St. (at Church). I did a walk by, and there is indeed a place called Takahachi Bakery going in on the ground floor of a new condo building called Tribeca Space. The sign on the window doesn’t say when it’s opening, and the bakery’s unofficial Web site (aka, a Facebook page) says they still can’t announce an opening date, after an initial May 17 date was delayed by at least a week due to the Building Department. If the photos they have up are any indication, there will be breads and pastries, and hot dogs will be involved.

There are a few diners downtown, but not many make me want to go inside. Every time I’ve walked by the Roxy Coffee Shop on John St. (btw. Nassau & Broadway) I’ve wanted to eat there. Its red retro sign would beckon to me, and the small space just looked interesting. And then it got a makeover recently, which is sometimes the kiss of death for any restaurant, diner or otherwise. Besides, aren’t diners and coffee shops supposed to be slightly frayed around the edges? Well, since I didn’t eat there before the renovation I can’t report on if the food quality or prices have changed. What I can report is that it’s like stepping into a small town where the proprietor, a very chatty guy, will sit down at your table and talk to you like he did with the ladies in the booth next to mine. And the daily special that I tried was freaking awesome.  Read more »

Some days when I’m deciding what to have for lunch, I want something specific like a plain slice of pizza. The day I went to Nu Sushi on Pearl St. (btw. Hanover & Broad) was not one of those days. I wanted a little bit of a few things, so in my mind the obvious choice was a bento box. Downtown lunch’er boomshanka had recommended the reastaurant’s bento in the forums as one of his go-to lunches. Nu Sushi is located in a strip of pricey restaurants near Hanover Square that barely offer anything under $10, but all of their bentos fall into that category. The only catch is that you have to get it to go, because if you eat in, the price goes up to $14.50 for some reason. So, let’s see what was inside this box, shall we? Read more »

If there’s one thing downtown is lacking in, it is gross (and I mean that in the best possible way) mash ups in sandwich form. The last place I expected to find such a thing was at Baba Ghanouge on Church St. (btw. Chambers & Reade), where their tagline is “Eat Healthy Live Longer.” Even the healthiest people like to put crappy food in their bodies sometimes, and for that purpose there is the chicken beiruti sandwich. It contains a secret ingredient that elevates this sandwich a few notches and almost makes you forget you’re eating in a place that’s trying to make you healthy. Read more »