Midtown Lunch

Sometimes we at Midtown Lunch: Downtown get offered a meal at fancy pants places with lunch outside the $10 price cap. Kutsher’s Tribeca on Franklin St. (btw. Hudson & Greenwich) which has a lovely-looking lunch menu including gems like duck schmaltz fries and a pastrami sandwich recently invited me to lunch. Instead of eating fatty meats and carbs myself, Kutsher’s has allowed me to give away a lunch for two for up to $100 to be used Monday through Friday between 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., and by May 31. If all of that sounds like something you could do, let us know in the comments why you and your guest should be the chosen ones. You have until the end of Friday to plead your case and a winner will be chosen and notified by the following Monday. Take a look at the lunch menu after the jump. Read more »

I know there are many of you who love Potbelly Sandwich Shop, and I have some good news for you. After an “oven warming” on Monday and Tuesday, according to the sandwich chain’s Twitter feed, that would logically mean the store at 280 Broadway (btw. Chambers & Reade) will be opening later this week. I’ll keep you posted when that day/time is posted. That means you can get A Wreck with some of those delicious pickled peppers without heading down to the Financial District.

When the paper came down from the windows of the new Aroma Espresso Bar at Church & Barclay, I was surprised by how nice and gigantic it looked inside. We in lower Manhattan are often subjected to tiny Starbucks locations or the superior but still tiny Financier shops. And the upper-tier, non-chain coffee shops in Tribeca are mostly tiny and have little for lunch that’s going to fill you up for $10 or less. When I looked at Aroma’s menu, I noticed that all of their sandwiches were less than $10 and even some of the salads clocked in under than amount. I’ve had their coffee at other locations and found it to be solid. Could this be a chain that this site can get behind?

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We are short on non-Starbucks coffee options in the lower part of Tribeca and most of the Financial District, so the news yesterday that the Aroma Espresso Bar at Church & Barclay would be opening at 10 a.m. today was more than welcome. I’m not sure if this location will have the same sandwiches and breakfast items with a Middle Eastern bent (the chain’s based in Israel), but the menu online looks pretty great with shakshuka and a halumi sandwich represented. If any of you stop in today, let us know what the scoop is in the comments.

There’s a string of cheap places to eat on Church St. that included Pakistan Tea House, Taco House, and their neighbor Mike’s Papaya on the corner at Reade St. Well, apparently we’re down a hot dog and drunk food purveyor as Lunch’er Dan wrote in to tell us that the gate’s been down for a couple of days (as you can see from the picture he snapped). They weren’t shuttered by the Department of Health, so it’s a little bit of a mystery why they’re closed. I never ate there but I’m sure those not wanting to eat at the Paki Tea House perhaps turned to Mike’s for lunch in a hurry. If’ it’s truly closed, it better not become a Subway (or a nail salon).

It took me about four trips to the website of My Belly’s Playlist to figure out what exactly this was. The 10 sandwiches on offer sounded really good and once I discovered through my digging that they were all $10 I got even more interested. But how could I procure one of these delicious beasts? It seemed that delivery was the only option and when co-founder/partner Bo Kim e-mailed later in the week, that was indeed the case. It’s operated out of the Yorganic store at Hanover Sq. & Broad, but you can’t actually order any of the sandwiches while walking in there. Clearly I was going to have to get lazy and let my fingers order up some lunch.

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One of the highlights in my year-and-a-half as your guide through the lunches of downtown Manhattan was discovering a $7 all-you-can-eat buffet at the delightfully-named Sea World in the gross upper reaches of Church St. When word came Friday that the place had closed and was possibly being taken over by pizza shop Saluggi’s, I couldn’t stop a “Nooo!” from escaping my mouth. Read more »