Midtown Lunch

I’ve had my eye on the Fishing Shrimp truck, which has shown up in Midtown and also one day a week in Soho while otherwise parking in Brooklyn and other parts of Manhattan. The truck’s premise is simple – fry a couple of types of seafood and serve them in a basket or sandwich, with fries if you choose. It’s nice that they didn’t try to throw in some other influence (cough, cough, Korean food) as many trucks do to varied success. But if you’re only serving fried seafood, you’d better do it well.

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With a broad menu that includes biryani and kati rolls along with some pretty amazing chicken over rice, it’s easy to skim over the rest of what the two Biryani House carts have to offer. The menu lists both fish and shrimp plates, although I was a little skeptical that they actually served these dishes since most people seem to stick to the Indian fare here. I decided to try my luck at the cart on Liberty St. (nr. Broadway), and lo and behold the tilapia over rice plate actually exists! But it is worth ordering over other things on the menu?

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Once the temperatures hit 80 degrees or higher, my lunchtime thoughts turn from lamb over rice to what I can eat that won’t make me feel even hotter and disgusting. I guess eating ice cream for lunch everyday isn’t a feasible option, but a sandwich with cold ingredients is. Zucker’s Bagels on Chambers St. (btw. W. Broadway & Greenwich) is one of those places that’s  little off the radar come lunch time, but wouldn’t you know they have a lot of sandwich options involving smoked fish, and some of them are less than $10. When the heat got to me late last week I headed over for some gravlax eaten between bagel halves. Read more »

There are now two cheap eats spots on a grimy stretch of Canal St., with a branch of $1 pizza spot Roll And Go and the recent addition of Black Burger right next to each other at the corner of West Broadway. Both places were clogged with high school students and because Black Burger is little more than a counter with a couple of stools for eating, it doesn’t take much for the line to stretch out the door. Inside, you’ll find a simple menu of either single or double hamburgers or cheeseburgers (fresh, never frozen!), fries and shakes with a grilled cheese and calamari fries thrown in for good measure. And beware the warning on the wall: “Once you go Black, you never go back.”

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This week marks two years since I’ve started writing  for you fine people on Midtown Lunch: Downtown and I thought it might be fun to tell you about some non-review lunches that I’ve eaten on a regular basis since I started working in the Financial District but haven’t ever written about. I’m saving my most shameful guilty pleasure lunch for the end of the week, but today you get the lunch that I’ve probably eaten the most when I’m crunched for time or can’t think of anything else imaginative to stuff in my face. That would be the catfish banh mi from Baoguette, extra spicy.

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With warm weather making guest appearances off and on lately, I’ve had lobster rolls on the brain and we are lucky to have more than one option for those in the Financial District. A few weeks ago I attended the Village Voice’s Choice Eats event and eating shrimp rolls from Luke’s Lobster and Red Hook Lobster Pound reminded me that these things are delicious and also, why have I not written about the one from Luke’s on this on the site yet? Also a fact: Luke’s Lobster’s shrimp roll is the only non-soup item on the menu for less than $10. Read more »

A couple of months ago, word reached ML that the Urban Lobster Shack in Midtown East had a lobster roll involving bacon. It turns out that the location on Stone St. (btw. Broad & Whitehall) also has this bacon lobster roll for $13, which is a couple of dollars more than the regular roll combo. It would appear it’s a roll with a strip of bacon inside, so whether that’s a good or bad addition is up to you to decide. I’m still a fan of their lobster scampi roll which is sounding pretty great in this warmer weather.