Midtown Lunch

Cheap Ass Food breaks the big Downtown Lunch news: a $5 banh mi cart started parking in the financial district this week (on Water & John). Obviously our Friday Downtown Lunch correspondent Daniel Krieger will check this out and report back… but more importantly, where’s our Midtown banh mi cart! Boi Sandwich (on 3rd btw. 44+45th) is fine, and the out of bounds Baoguette is really excellent, but $5 vietnamese sandwiches from a cart is another animal entirely. Waaaah! (That was me crying/whining by the way.)

Photo courtesy of Cheap Ass Food

No Downtown review from Daniel this week… but here are a few little tidbits that may be interesting to the Downtown Lunch’ers.

The other day the New York Post reported that in order to save money, a lot of Wall Street investment banker types were eating at McDonald’s! Guys, have you not been reading Daniel Krieger’s Friday Downtown Lunch column right here on ML? You don’t need to eat at McDonald’s… there are plenty of better cheap lunch options Downtown. Sadly, though, Mangia will not be one of those options. They are closing permanently today.

On a lighter note, Daniel did send along these awesome photos of the Rickshaw Dumpling Truck which has been spending Thursdays downtown. Although in these trying economic times it’s hard to understand why anybody who works so close to Chinatown would ever spend $6 on dumplings! (Midtown Lunch’ers, on the other hand, can be a desperate lot sometimes.)

More dumpling truck porn is after the jump…

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Daniel’s weekly downtown lunch review is coming in just a bit, but he checks in with these updates to the Downtown lunching scene:

1) Farewell Mr. Skewer we hardly knew ya. After about 2 months, and despite a glowing ML lunch review (which a friend told me they saw posted in the window of the 14th st location, but never in the downtown one for some reason), Mr. Skewer closed it’s doors this past week. That spot has turned over several times in the past few years… so either the space is cursed or the rent is too damn high. Don’t be too sad though, their gargatuan chorizo sandwich will still be available on 14th st, as their store is slated to stay open (probably because they’re the ones with our review posted…kidding!)

Two bits of good news are after the jump… 

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Midtown workers shouldn’t have all the fun, so to even the score, I’ve brought on Daniel Krieger as an official Downtown Lunch Correspondent to write up some of the tasty stuff you can get in the lower half of Manhattan. He’s a great photographer (ensuring good food porn), but more importantly he is a lover of cheap, unique and delicious eats (or as I like to call it- Midtown Lunch’ish food.)

BurgerBurger is located at 77 Pearl street, amid a row of quick lunch spots for the downtown worker bees. At first glance I thought it might be a bit expensive for Midtown Lunch because I was staring at the special of the day, the Aussie, served every Tuesday. There’s a different special 7 days a week, which includes fries (or salad), and a soda. At 11.99 it’s a bit steep but if you’re just looking for a cheeseburger and fries we’re only talking $8.50.

Despite the price, I had to try the Aussie because I’ve never had one before. Between a gently toasted brioche bun they stack and squeeze a mound of toppings on each other. First there’s a 6oz angus patty topped with lettuce, tomato, a thick slab of roasted beet, and a fried egg for good measure, all slathered in a special sauce.

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**************THIS PLACE IS NOW CLOSED******************

Midtown workers shouldn’t have all the fun, so to even the score, I’ve brought on Daniel Krieger as an official Downtown Lunch Correspondent to write up some of the tasty stuff you can get in the lower half of Manhattan. He’s a great photographer (ensuring good food porn), but more importantly he is a lover of cheap, unique and delicious eats (or as I like to call it- Midtown Lunch’ish food.) This week he hits up Mix Grill, a newly opened Middle Eastern place that is practically an indoor street meat vendor.

Mix Grill is a recently opened addition to the cheap downtown lunch scene. Located at 165 Church street, it is essentially a standard lunchtime street cart- situated in a small brick-n-mortar. Even the menu is similar to what you would find while standing on line at cart on the sidewalk. With the weather getting chilly though, this might be a good place to check out for all your shawarma, falafel, and shish kebab desires.

I’m a fan of chicken shwarma so I wanted to check this place out, especially when I saw the large spit of rotating greasy chicken pieces stacked on top of each other slowly spinning around. After drooling for a few minutes by the window the owner said either come in and buy something or I’m calling the cops.

I went in.

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Midtown workers shouldn’t have all the fun, so to even the score, I’ve brought on Daniel Krieger as an official Downtown Lunch Correspondent to write up some of the tasty stuff you can get in the lower half of Manhattan. He’s a great photographer (ensuring good food porn), but more importantly he is a lover of cheap, unique and delicious eats (or as I like to call it- Midtown Lunch’ish food.) Today he’s all about meat on a stick… without actually geting meat on a stick!  Unless they skewer the whole thighs.  Do they skewer whole thighs?  Holy mackerel…

Mr. Skewer & Co. just sounds like a bad porn name… and yet despite that fact, I still went in to scope out the joint. When you enter their new downtown location situated on Broadway between Worth and Thomas street, you’ll find large metal skewers rotating with juicy hunks of chicken on them.

I was tempted to get the chorizo sandwich as it passed by in front of my face and the fragrant scent of spicy pork scent awakened my taste buds… but I decided to go with an economical but satisfying combination platter. The “light spicy chicken thighs” served with 2 sides for $7.45.

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Our Downtown Lunch man Daniel Krieger sent along this update about BBQ Express, the little window in Chinatown that sells Mexican corn and meat skewers: “If their prices weren’t cheap enough, BBQ express has introduced lunch specials and hot dogs!”  Nice!  You know what else they’ve added?  A “marketing” person to shill for them. The bottom five comments on the original BBQ Express post (from patrickgoluck, treeen88, jw, and foodlover) are all from the same IP address.  This site tolerates a lot in the comments- but multiple postitive or negative comments from the same person pretending to be multiple people, isn’t one of those things. (Unless it is coming from Midtown Lunch’s one legitimately schizophrenic commenter.)  Besides, you don’t need to shill for a place selling lunch specials like these.  They sell themselves!