Midtown Lunch

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that Dominic’s Truck was parked in the same spot every day on Whitehall (nr. Water) serving cheese steaks and Italian sausages and that’s about it. I asked you lunch’ers if it was worth a shot, and you said yes (although not if it’s a long hike). On a day when a nice greasy lunch that would likely give me heartburn sounded good, I headed down to see what Dominic was cooking up and just how much his food would set me back.

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As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have recently-transplanted lunch’er Craig who is burger crazy, and is slowly ticking lunches off his list during his time downtown.

Name: Craig W.

Occupation: Consultant

Where you work: Big 4 accounting firm

Age: 22

Favorite Kinds of Food: Anything artery clogging, especially burgers and fries.

Least Favorite Foods: Seafood and sushi.

Favorite Lunches Downtown: Adrienne’s Pizza Bar on Stone St. (nr. Hanover) for an old-fashioned pie with pepperoni; Sophie’s Cuban (Multiple Locations) for the roast pork meal with yellow rice and black beans, covered in amounts of the accompanying green sauce that make your coworkers say, “Are you sure you need that much?” It’s lunchtime gluttony at its finest.; Goodburger on Maiden (at Gold) for  a third-pounder classic cooked medium rare with bacon, cheese, fried onions and ketchup; Sam’s Falafel cart on Cedar (nr. Broadway) for a falafel sandwich with hummus, baba gannouj, fried eggplant, fried onion, lettuce, tomato and tahini; Wafels & Dinges truck on Wednesdays for a liege with Nutella, banana, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Delmonico’s if I’m not paying.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: At the moment I’m two blocks away from a Goodburger, and I have a really hard time going to the Hale & Hearty across the street with my health-conscious coworkers when I can smell those juicy third-pounders.  I’ve only been based out of this office for a few weeks now and am still exploring the mind-boggling plethora of options downtown, but for now I’m gonna have to go with Goodburger for my burger addiction.  It’s definitely not the best burger I’ve had, but I have to give it the title of my favorite chain/fast-food burger.  Everyone’s on the Shack Shack train except for me, and I’m not a fan of Five Guys. This new brand of quality meat cooked thin and well done will just never cut it for me.  Sophie’s Cuban has also been a once-a-week favorite.  You can’t beat the amount of delicious food you get for $10, or the instant food coma that ensues.

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I know the green sauce at Sophie’s holds a special place in a lot of your pernil-clogged hearts, so good news! Now you can buy jars of it for $5.99 and pour it on whatever you want in the comfort of your own home or office. The sign was only in the window at the location on Chambers St. (at Church), and not the one on Fulton St. Maybe now we can finally know what’s in this stuff?

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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