Midtown Lunch

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have Sherry, a fellow food blogger with a twist who likes Asian food of all stripes and is mourning the loss of her favorite food cart.

Name: Sherry

Occupation: Co-founder of Appetite for Good (http://appetiteforgood.com), a new kind of food blog that focuses on the philanthropic side of chefs and restaurants.

Where you work: Soho, for my day job

Age: 25

Favorite Kinds of Food: I’ll give anything for good Japanese food. I love love love sushi! And Chinese food – good, authentic Chinese food is really hard to find in New York, though. I just came back from Shanghai and had some of the best dim sum I’ve had in my life. I wish I can find dim sum of that caliber (and price LOL) in Chinatown!

Least Favorite Foods: Call me boring, but I can’t eat anything too salty or greasy. I have a “delicate” palate, as described by one of my friends. Hey, gotta be sensitive to all the subtle flavors of Japanese food, right? Read more »

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have Paul, who grew up in Hong Kong, wishes there was more variety in carts and hates foods that try to be something they’re not.

Name: Paul Chaveriat

Occupation: Institutional Sales

Where you work: Wall St

Age: 26

Favorite Kinds of Food: I generally like simple, traditional foods. I believe quality of ingredients and amount of preparation should be inversely related. I grew up in Hong Kong, so I am partial to Asian food, though I will eat and enjoy almost anything. My all-time favorite foods of any kind are: medium rare rib eye with salt and pepper, sushi (uni and toro), fresh pasta, burrata.

Least Favorite Foods: Imposters – California rolls, Peking duck without the skin, skim milk, teriyaki sauce dumped on white rice, string cheese mozzarella, turkey burgers, turkey bacon. I also don’t enjoy the flavor of licorice, most things bitter, coconut flakes and Jell-O. Read more »

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have five guys from Wieden + Kennedy in Soho. You may know them as the ones with the awesome Wall of Restaurant Worship. They have pretty different eating styles and I’m amazed they can ever agree on where to get lunch, but they have quite the list of favorite spots.

Name: Phil Chang, Eric Collins, Larry Pipitone, Joey Ellis, Keiji Ando

Occupation: Multi-disciplinary creative team (also DJing couples therapy
sessions).

Where you work: Wieden + Kennedy NY

Ages: 23 – 25

Favorite Kinds of Food: It’s impossible to answer this question without offending one of us. The group ranges from Phil, who’ll eat anything just to say he ate it to Larry, who might flip the table if there’s anything other than polenta and chicken on his plate. Eric and Joey are open to expanding their palates, but are admittedly conservative with the exploration of foods they haven’t tried yet. Keiji is ostensibly invested in discovering new foods but for some reason refuses to admit if there are things he doesn’t particularly enjoy eating.

Least Favorite Foods: If we start at the middle of the spectrum, Eric and Joe kind of draw the line at things like chicken feet, jellyfish and tripe, so the texture foods of the world have historically been off the table for them.You know, things you might see “Food Network” travel hosts feign freak-outs over. Keiji has a completely subjective distaste for cafeteria-style food from certain local take-out spots, while others are, inexplicably, completely agreeable. The rest of us can’t understand where the prejudice springs from. Meanwhile, Larry’s most frequent menu selections are not dissimilar to what the Irish imaginably had access to during the Potato Famine. Conversely, it’s hard to pinpoint what Phil won’t eat because he’s eaten genitalia in stews before. Allegedly, this was not of the human variety. Read more »

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have Brian who’s a recent transplant downtown from Greenwich Village. He’s off to a good start downtown with some Caribbean but is in search of a certain Thai dish.

Name: Brian

Occupation: Resident of podiatric surgery

Where you work: NY Downtown Hospital

Age: 29

Favorite Kinds of Food: Margherita pizza with extra basil, East Coast oysters, and my Grandpa’s crab salad sandwiches

Least Favorite Food: Boiled peas. Ugh.

Favorite Lunches Downtown: Veronica’s Kitchen (Front St. at Pine) for her jerk chicken or curry goat. Table Tales (Water St. btw. Beekman & Peck Slip) for a quick sandwich – you can’t go wrong with the old-fashioned pot roast or the grilled chicken BRAT (bacon, romaine, avocado & tomato).

Read more »

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have Serena who is a finalist for the sixth season of “The Next Food Network Star” and also has an online cooking show called “Cooking In Manhattan.” She lists a pricey ingredient among her disliked foods.

Name: Serena Palumbo

Occupation: Attorney by day and cook by night

Where you work: on Wall Street

Age: 31, with good genes and good doctors

Favorite Kinds of Food: Italian, Sushi, Spanish tapas, South American. I was brought up with Italian food, and the best comfort food is a slice of eggplant parmigiana with some crunchy bread, or in the winter some ossobuco with gremolada and saffron risotto. Sushi is not really an acquired taste for me because I was brought up in Southern Italy with a great fish market so I have always loved raw fish.  Same applies for South American food, because ceviche and tiradito are really delicious. I also have a lot of South American friends and whenever I travel to their countries I try to have the full blown local experience like Anthony Bourdain in No Reservations! I love to go back to NY and bring the inspiration from those recipes with me!

Least Favorite Food: Caviar

Favorite Lunches Downtown: Ulysses (Pearl St. nr. Hanover Square) for the carving station and specials. I love their mac and cheese. Adrienne’s Pizza Bar on Stone St. (nr. Hanover Square) because the pizza and salad are great to share with my colleagues. I cheat on Keste when I can get a big group of co-workers to go with me. Financier (Multiple Locations) for their little financiers – the delightful little almond mini-muffins they give you with coffee.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: The Golden Chopstick (Pearl St. nr. Hanover Square) – best Chinese takeout! They have the most amazing cashew nut chicken.

Place you discovered thanks to Midtown Lunch: I need to check out the Web site more often! Read more »

Occupation: Theater Composer and Arts Administrator

Where you work: John and Gold streets

Age: 25

Favorite Kinds of Food: Narrowing it down is not easy. Cured pork of basically any variety, sushi (especially mackerel but really everything), buttery sardines, runny egg yolks, good hot sauce on deeply unhealthy crispy meat (wings, schwarma, burgers, you name it), dumplings – especially the fried soup dumplings with a name I can never remember, big bowls of noodles in soup, butternut and patty pan squash, and green zebra heirloom tomatoes. Garlic in all its many and varied forms. Really, the tomatoes should have gone higher on that list.

Least Favorite Foods: Melted cheese that’s half-recongealed so it’s hard but still stretches in that gross rubbery way, undersalted things, shredded coconut, microwaved pizza crust, dry fish, cucumbers where they don’t belong… Read more »

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have Corie, who calls herself “a pretty boring eater,” and ain’t afraid of  no carbs.

Name: Corie Russell

Occupation: Freelance writer/proofreader

Where you work: Wall and William streets

Age: 26

Favorite Kinds of Food?: Italian: pasta with vodka sauce, cheese slice. Hummus = yummy. Seafood, with crab, shrimp and salmon at the top of the list.

Least Favorite Foods?: Indian, anything spicy. Also, chicken = gross.

Favorite Lunches Downtown?: Zeytuna (Maiden Lane btw. Nassau & William) for their tuna sandwich. Au Bon Pain (Multiple Locations) for the soup and tomato and cheese snack. Cosi (Multiple Locations) for the tuna sandwich and pizzas.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: Zeytuna, because it’s easy with the buffet style. And it’s fast and cheap, if you don’t order a million things. Wall Street Burger Shoppe (Water St. btw. Broad & Coenties Alley), various street meat carts.

Place you discovered thanks to Midtown Lunch?: Sam’s Falafel Cart (Liberty Plaza, btw. Liberty & Cedar)

Dream job location, purely for lunch purposes, and why: Brooklyn – anywhere near El Jalapeno…greatest Mexican food ever.

Anything you’d like to ask the Midtown Lunch readers?: Good hummus places? (I love Hummus Kitchen but am looking for others, too.)

Well, my favorite hummus place is sadly located in Brooklyn (Mimi’s Hummus), although they should totally open a branch somewhere below Houston St. (hint, hint). I don’t even know of any hummus chains located downtown. Anybody have some hidden source of non-packaged hummus for Corie? Also, if you like Sam’s Falafel, maybe you should check out Alan’s Falafel cart across the street.And as always, if you would like to be next week’s Profiled Lunch’er (or know somebody you’d like to nominate), email us at downtownnyc@midtownlunch.com.