Midtown Lunch

When the weather gets disgustingly hot, sometimes the idea of eating anything above room temperature sounds as appealing as eating a certain lobster salad sandwich. So this week I didn’t want to walk too far to get lunch, wanted something light and after considering a banh mi instead ended up at JR Sushi 2 on W. Broadway (btw.  Chambers & Warren). You may know it as “that place that sells bubble tea” as that seems to be what they advertise the most. They also have a decent selection of lunch specials for less than $10 and I headed into the air conditioning to get a bento box.

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It’s always a gamble when you head to any street cart with one item in mind, keeping your fingers crossed they will have it when you get there. I headed to HM Halal on Greenwich (nr. Beach) in Tribeca with the intention of trying the salmon over rice after a rave from lunch’er Mike. And I didn’t really have a back up plan should they not have that one item, so of course when I got there and was told they had already sold out I did the next best thing which was ordering a chicken and lamb combo over rice ($5.50). After all, it had been a while since I’d had the cheap lunch of kings. Read more »

Have you ever been devouring a plate of lamb or chicken over rice from your favorite street meat cart and thought to yourself, “Wow, this food is really bad for me?” If the answer is yes, then I’m going to point you in the direction of Mimi’s Cafe on Church St. (at Reade) in Tribeca. It’s eye-catching with a wall of photos of the sandwiches and other vaguely healthy things found inside plastered all over the outside. It’s just a few doors down from another place also serving slightly healthier versions of street meat – Baba Ghanouge, aka, the place that stuffs french fries in its sandwiches. What drew me into this den of healthy food was the promise of an alternative form of gyro.

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Imagine this on a street in Tribeca.

It’s hard work sitting around all day waiting for some guy under house arrest to…leave the house? When I took this photo Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his crowd of reporters were camped out at 71 Broadway in the Financial District. And then he decided that wasn’t good enough and moved into some swank townhouse Wednesday night on Franklin btw. Varick & Hudson in Tribeca. While DSK himself likely wouldn’t consult ML Downtown for where to get lunch, I bet those reporters will get bored and hungry pretty quickly. And even the French reporters could probably use a good fried chicken suggestion. Read more »

We’ve all been there: You go to a by-the-pound buffet and have to hold back on the heavy items for fear of paying $20 for lunch. A couple of Indian restaurants in Tribeca offer all-you-can-eat lunch buffets, including Salaam Bombay on Greenwich St. (btw. Duane & Reade) and Taj Tribeca. But they’re also both a few dollars over the $10 mark that I try to not top unless it involves Russian spa cuisine. So when I saw that in addition to the eat-in buffet at Salaam Bombay, you could also stuff a takeaway container for $10 I smelled a challenge. Read more »

If you’ve ever shopped at the Whole Foods in Tribeca you may have noticed the street cart parked out in front serving everything that the grocery store does not. That is: Meat and non-organic vegetables from questionable sources packaged in styrofoam and plastic bags. The Tribeca Halal cart, parked on the corner of Greenwich & Warren, serves the trinity of falafel, lamb and chicken but also some oddities like a fried chicken cutlet hero, Philly cheese steak, french fries and chicken teriyaki. When I spotted that last item on one of the bright yellow circles dotting the front of the cart I knew I must try it. Plus, at the low, low price of $6, if it was too terrible I could just head into Whole Foods.

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I don’t often venture over to the edges of Tribeca because it’s mostly full of restaurants so far out of the ML Downtown price range that it’s laughable. But a couple of weeks ago I was doing a little online digging to see if there were any decent BBQ spots downtown, and a place called Cornerstone Grill on Greenwich (at Duane) was mentioned. Sure enough, when I walked over I spotted an awning bearing the glorious words “chicken and ribs.” Was I even in Tribeca anymore?

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