Midtown Lunch

Normally we keep this site focused on lunch, but an event featuring $1 slices of pizza happening downtown after work cannot be ignored. Slice Out Hunger is happening on Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at St. Anthony’s Church which is in Soho at Sullivan St. & W. Houston. A bunch of pizzerias donate pies, you buy tokens at the door for $1 slices, and all of the proceeds go to City Harvest. A bunch of Downtown Lunch favorites will be there like Prince St. Pizza, Da Mikele, Farinella, Ben’s of Soho and Rubirosa as well as others from pizza places all over the city. You can find all of the information on it here and maybe want to save some room at lunch tomorrow.

There are no shortage of ice cream options in this city, but Soho’s going to get another one for a day next week. Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream will be driving its Street Treats Truck from Ohio to take part in the Meatopia event, and will then make stops in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including in front of Dean & DeLuca at Broadway & Prince St. on Tuesday from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. The best part is they’re giving out free samples of delicious-sounding flavors like sweet corn with black raspberries. Freeloaders, you know what to do.

Anyone who’s worked in the central part of Soho long enough probably knows about Cafe Duke on Broadway (btw. Spring & Prince). I’d never been inside before but braved the hordes of shoppers to check it out and found it to be a massive space stretching from the front of the building to the back, with another entrance on Mercer St. Up front you’ll find sandwiches, some hot items, then a by-the-pound buffet that had such delights as fried chicken and some Chinese food, but you may want to head to the back to a counter merely marked “grill.” That’s where you’ll find bibimbap, a by-the-pound noodle saute station, ramen and what I was after – donburi.  Read more »

There were rumors that La Nueva Conquista on Lafayette St. (at Spring) had shuttered, but I needed to lay eyes on this tragedy myself. The Dominican cheap eats institution leaves a hole in the Soho lunch scene that’s sadly void of affordable plates of fatty pork and rice. Yes, Chinatown’s a short stroll away, and I guess Cafe Habana can take up some of the slack in the roast pork department, but it just won’t be the same as standing in line with construction workers and restaurant deliverymen at La Nueva.

There aren’t a lot of Latin food options in Soho or Nolita other than La Nueva Conquista on Lafayette and a couple others in areas in the outer reaches of the neighborhood. If you want to sit down and eat your Cubano in a restaurant for less than $10, the options are even more grim, and Cafe Habana on Prince St. (at Elizabeth) offers that with prices that are gentler than most eateries in this area. In addition to the sit down part of the cafe, there’s the Habana To Go takeout shop next door on Elizabeth St. which you will probably not want to linger in since it’s not air conditioned, but it’s good for grabbing a sandwich or burrito and eating on a bench out front or somewhere that’s not 90 degrees.

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The Desi Food Truck seemed to flit in and out of the Twitter Tracker and would occasionally make its way to the Financial District. Now it seems they’ve found a daily spot at Soho Square Park at 6th Ave. and Spring St., according to their Twitter feed. They were kicked out of Midtown and tried parking in the FiDi permanently but as you all know, there are a ton of trucks vying for a small number of spots every day. The food is pretty decent and there aren’t a lot of Indian options in that area, so it seems to be a win-win situation for those who can’t make it over to Hudson St. or down to the Lent Space lot to visit trucks.