Midtown Lunch

So far in 2014 I haven’t eaten a lunch that made me super excited to write about it. That all changed on Wednesday when my original lunch idea fell through and I impulsively stopped by Veronica’s Kitchen cart because their roti has been on my “to eat” list for ages. Yes, we’ve sampled the jerk chicken before, but let me tell you, it’s superb in roti form and you get a huge amount of food for a mere $6.  Read more »

Normally we don’t post about things happening on weekends (unless it’s something awesome like the Vendy Awards), but there’s a pilot event this Sunday at the New Amsterdam Market at the South St. Seaport that sounds pretty cool. It’s called International Meats Local and involves Vendy winners including Solber Pupusas, A-Pou’s Taste and Veronica’s Kitchen cooking some of their regular dishes with sustainable, locally-sourced ingredients. There are early bird and general admission tickets available here for $30 or $20 respectively, and they include tastes of the food.

We now have three carts serving food from the Caribbean in the Financial District and until last week I’d eaten at two of them. The Trinidad & Tobago cart down on Whitehall St. served me a delicious roti and I really liked the food from R. Retha’s cart (aka the Jamaican Dutchy) on S. William. The cart I’d never tried was Veronica’s Kitchen on Front St. (at Pine) and I’m not quite sure why. There’s normally a long, imposing line for what Veronica’s cooking, but because it was a rainy and windy day and the area was deserted prior to Thanksgiving, there was one person in front of me when I stopped by last week. While there was jerk chicken on offer, it’s already been Downtown Lunch approved, so I went with another standby – brown stew chicken.

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One of the things I think we do right downtown is food from street carts. Legendary street meat? Check (check, check, and check). Barbecue? Check. Caribbean soul food? Check and check.  And that’s all not even counting the trucks that bounce back and forth between here and Midtown! (I do really want a German sausage cart though.) Yesterday, Eater gave a brief lament about how bad the food situation is in the Financial District.  I just don’t think they’ve taken the time to explore our riches, and the same goes for all those poor (generous, as it was a “$5 donation day”) saps standing in line at the Chipotle opening.  Well, hopefully that’s what we’re doing with this website. We’re doing our best to find those lunches we think are worth knowing and bringing them to your computer screen.  What you do with that information once it’s there is entirely up to you. But I hope you’re passing it on, telling people about the food you think is worth it, not for the benefit of this website, but for the benefit of the people serving the food.  Over the course of my time writing for this site, my appreciation for those men and women has grown enormously.  Their dedication to their livelihood really is inspiring.  It puts the mailman to shame (no offense, mailpeople).  My point is these folks are dependent on our support. Without us, they’d be gone and without them, we’d be standing in a 30 minute line for Chipotle.  No matter how much you love Chipotle, I guarantee you that would suck.  So please, spread the word about your favorite street vendors. You don’t even have to tell them about Midtown Lunch, take all the credit yourself for the ones you think are gems. All I ask is that you tell just one person about the food Downtown that’s worth eating before it’s all gone.

Anyway, I’m sad to say that this will be my last post as co-editor of Midtown Lunch: Downtown NYC.  It’s been a blast, but life is calling beyond the boundaries of Downtown and Kevin and I are not quite in a position to give up our day jobs just yet to be full time bloggers.  It has most certainly been a blast though.  As a farewell post, I want to focus in on one of my all-time favorite fatty dishes around here, Oxtail.  There’s something about those flavorful hunks of meat that drive me wild. They’ve got everything I could ask for in a dish: gravy, tender meat you can eat off of a bone, great flavor, and bone marrow.  There’s really not a whole bunch out there that meets all of these qualifications, but when I found Oxtail, I knew it was true love.  Down here in the Financial District, we’re lucky enough to have a few places to choose from when it comes to this dish of the pleasantly plump gods, and today I’d like a take a moment to compare a couple. Read more »

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.) I’m trying to get Daniel to eat at more carts, and this week he has suprisingly obliged (considering we’re in the middle of a public germs crisis!)

More Street Carts Zach says! Yes sir! Now that the weather is warming I’m more open to checking out some street carts I’ve heard about such as Veronica’s Kitchen on Front Street.

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