Midtown Lunch

I was wandering down West Broadway one day when I walked past two seemingly nameless restaurants, each with the same black and white striped awning.  Then I saw the words “Vietnamese sandwiches” inside the smaller one and may have squealed a little. It turns out the larger place is a sit-down Southeast Asian restaurant Mangez Avec Moi, or “Eat With Me.” They had some tasty enough sounding lunch specials for $7.50, but my heart was after the restaurant’s “Express” take out sandwich shop next door.

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Lunch’er “Bones” sends us word that The Original SoupMan at 110 Pearl on Hanover Square has been seized, apparently for non-payment of taxes. It’s a branch of the mega-chain associated with Al Yeganeh, better known as Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi.

We’ll keep you up-to-date on developments, and in the meantime, there’s always the life-changing Hot Soup Cart.

One of the things I think we do right downtown is food from street carts. Legendary street meat? Check (check, check, and check). Barbecue? Check. Caribbean soul food? Check and check.  And that’s all not even counting the trucks that bounce back and forth between here and Midtown! (I do really want a German sausage cart though.) Yesterday, Eater gave a brief lament about how bad the food situation is in the Financial District.  I just don’t think they’ve taken the time to explore our riches, and the same goes for all those poor (generous, as it was a “$5 donation day”) saps standing in line at the Chipotle opening.  Well, hopefully that’s what we’re doing with this website. We’re doing our best to find those lunches we think are worth knowing and bringing them to your computer screen.  What you do with that information once it’s there is entirely up to you. But I hope you’re passing it on, telling people about the food you think is worth it, not for the benefit of this website, but for the benefit of the people serving the food.  Over the course of my time writing for this site, my appreciation for those men and women has grown enormously.  Their dedication to their livelihood really is inspiring.  It puts the mailman to shame (no offense, mailpeople).  My point is these folks are dependent on our support. Without us, they’d be gone and without them, we’d be standing in a 30 minute line for Chipotle.  No matter how much you love Chipotle, I guarantee you that would suck.  So please, spread the word about your favorite street vendors. You don’t even have to tell them about Midtown Lunch, take all the credit yourself for the ones you think are gems. All I ask is that you tell just one person about the food Downtown that’s worth eating before it’s all gone.

Anyway, I’m sad to say that this will be my last post as co-editor of Midtown Lunch: Downtown NYC.  It’s been a blast, but life is calling beyond the boundaries of Downtown and Kevin and I are not quite in a position to give up our day jobs just yet to be full time bloggers.  It has most certainly been a blast though.  As a farewell post, I want to focus in on one of my all-time favorite fatty dishes around here, Oxtail.  There’s something about those flavorful hunks of meat that drive me wild. They’ve got everything I could ask for in a dish: gravy, tender meat you can eat off of a bone, great flavor, and bone marrow.  There’s really not a whole bunch out there that meets all of these qualifications, but when I found Oxtail, I knew it was true love.  Down here in the Financial District, we’re lucky enough to have a few places to choose from when it comes to this dish of the pleasantly plump gods, and today I’d like a take a moment to compare a couple. Read more »

Considering the sheer number of those who have immigrated from Puerto Rico to New York City, I’m really shocked at how difficult it can be to find Puerto Rican food. Sure, you could head to the outer boroughs for the good stuff or wait for the random street fair to come around, but it seems to me that pasteles should be to New York what tacos are to L.A. It should just be what the average New Yorker goes out and grabs for a quick bite. And yet, for some reason it’s hard as hell to find this kind of thing in the business centers of Manhattan. Lucky for all of us Downtown, there’s Sandra’s food cart.

Located on Nassau between Cedar and Liberty, very close to Ravioli Fair and Gloria’s burrito cart, Sandra’s happens to be one of my favorite food carts. The ladies working there are unbelievably nice, somehow the hot dogs are better than any other cart in the city, and every once in awhile they’ll bust out some seasonal specials. Over the winter they were serving a beef stew that my coworker told me was awesome, but the day I went to go check it out was apparently the first day they decided to stop serving it (As Zach would say, “Cue overhead shot with me yelling, ‘Nooooooooooooooo!'”). I wasn’t going to miss my opportunity this time. I noticed last week that they had started serving pasteles on Fridays with rice, pigeon peas, and salad for 8 bucks. You couldn’t stop me, no way, no how.

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For those of you who work or live in Tribeca, I apologize for what I’m about to say, but on the other hand, I’m sure you’ll probably agree with me when I say that Tribeca is a little hoity-toity.  A tad highfalutin.  Perhaps a skosh grandiloquent.  But you’re lunch’ers nonetheless and for that, we love you.  So this one’s for you, Tribeca.

Just yesterday I found out that a friend of mine I hadn’t seen in nigh 6 years and hadn’t even spoken with since I moved to New York had taken up residence in our fair city.  In fact, they were living mere blocks from my old apartment and also worked within lunching distance of my office.  So the natural thing to do was to meet up for lunch ASAP.  Meeting somewhere in the middle, I suggested we give Columbine (on the corner of West Broadway and White St.).  Daniel Krieger swung by this spot more than a year and a half ago (took some awesome pictures too!) and made the dreaded mistake of ordering a salad, but I had heard they know their way around a sandwich and a cup of soup. And boy howdy, did they. Read more »

I can’t always offer a good explanation of why I like a place, and Jou Jou Cafe on the corner of Nassau and Maiden Lane is one that stumps me a bit. It’s not the tastiest or the cheapest or the nicest or the most creative, but I still find myself coming back.

Maybe it’s the always-very-friendly staff, or maybe the consistently interesting selection of sandwiches. Or maybe it’s just that while Jou Jou is not superlative in any one category, it does well in all of them. Whenever I go – which is pretty often – I feel like I’ve gotten a good meal for a good price.

You’ll find drool-inducing photos of two such meals after jump.

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I’m a guy who likes to try a little bit of everything when I’m eating out. I love menu items with the word “sampler” in them, and my friends graciously tolerate my wandering fork at meals. Given my predilection for variety, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I love bento boxes. They’re the perfect way to get a little bit of a lot of things, and I wish every world cuisine had their own take on the bento.

For Japanese bento, though, Niko Niko on Pearl between Wall and Pine will treat you right. They serve up good bentos at reasonable prices in a large, glossy space. It’s probably not the best food or the cheapest, but the good balance between quantity, quality, variety, and price will have me coming back.

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