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135 midtown lunch spots in 3 years; my favorites are...
Posted: 10:41 pm, December 22nd, 2011 in Midtown Eating
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10 Comments
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I'm very surprised to see 3 of your top 5 are huge chains. Say it ain't so!
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you're lucky its going to be a slow day. MLer's would go to town on you for those 3.
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It is kinda sad that, with 73 places to choose from this year alone, only two non-chains could crack the top five. But then if all you want besides Cuban food is salad, burritos, and soup, I guess that's how it will fall out.
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-Hale and Hearty Soups
-Just Salad
-ChipotleI have eaten at all of these places and I would _never_ pick them over all of the other great places in midtown I have tried. Even when I am starving I still wouldn't consider them an option, ever. Especially Just Salad. You really think that Jusat Salad > Shake Shack? Like hell naw. I'm almost tempted call bullshit on that post.
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And the handful of times I've been to Just Salad it's very difficult to keep it in the MTL price range.
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What can I say? I also like espresso drinks from Manhattan Espresso Cafe, Joe the Art of Coffee, Cafe Macchiato, Filicori Zecchini (and Margon and Sophie's, of course) -- but a latte from Starbucks remains among my favorites.
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Ignore the peanut gallery. It sounds like you had fun! Cool!
I would love to see others post how many new places they tried this year and their top five favs! That would be fun.
Midtownlunch.com is a slamming website, and a must-read daily. It sounds like you have had fun exploring midtown for the past 3 years, along with all of us, using it as your guide.
If you tried 135 different places, I am sure they weren't all chains. Kudos to you for exploring and trying different things. I am surprised, as everyone else may be, that your favs include chains, but hey- Your favs are your favs. Everyone reading this website has their own preferences. What you like is what you like. At least you explored and discovered new places, and had fun while doing so. You didn't mindlessly follow your colleagues to Cafe Metro day after day.
I wouldn't choose the 5 favs you picked, but I am not you. I am sure you are aware if you read this blog regularly that the sentiment around these parts is that chains are the devil's lair, even though there are some chains that get much love here. SHRUG. You named Chipotle as one of your top fives, and with the hate for Chipotle around here, that is bold man. I think the point for the hate should be toward folks like some of my colleagues that literally go there every day mindlessly, instead of trying all the new places as you did, and then deciding for yourself what you liked best.
It also sounds as if you had a nice balance of bringing lunch to work and eating out and exploring, as I like to do. Unfortunately, eating out is expensive, but so much fun! I can't afford to eat out everyday, but I love to try the new places when they hit town; I just don't re-visit places very often, and stick to trying new places. If you tried 73 places in one year, it sounds like you ate out once or twice a week..yet over time was able to try an awesome amount of new places, with only a few repeats. Great idea!
I look forward to following midtownlunch.com in the new year and can't wait to see what 2012 bring to our taste buds!
HAVE FUN EXPLORING!
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Wrong holiday charlito--april fools day isn't for 3 months.This is your only post ever. You can't be serious. You just can't. And if you are, why are you posting your lameass love of chains for all to ridicule! Like we give a----partridge in a pear tree--about your horrible chain love. ipoopinyoureye charlito. I fling poop, at you, in your eye.
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Some chains can serve up good food. But then there's Chipotle, which evokes my one-word review: Shitpotle.
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He probably meant restaurants that he visited most often....
Mine are Glaze for chicken thigh-$8.75, Obao for Bun bo hue-$8, Thai 51 for pad thai and their amazing green papaya salad-$10, Hide Chan for Hakata donkotsu ramen-$8.75, Grand Sichuan Eatern for double cooked pork lunch special for $8 and Korean Express for their $9 lunch special and other options under $10.
My splurge place is Ise for their lunch special which runs between $12-15.
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Since I began working in midtown three years ago, I’ve eaten lunch in 135 different places, nearly all of them the spend-$10-and-find-a-seat-or-take-out kind favored by most Midtown Lunch adventurers. In the past year alone, I had lunch at 73 different midtown places, 51 of them for the first time.
My five favorite lunch spots in the past year were:
-Margon
-Sophie's Cuban Kitchen
-Hale and Hearty Soups
-Just Salad
-Chipotle
I grew up eating good Cuban food at home, and remain partial to that cuisine--the octopus salad with rice and pigeon peas and yuca at Margon is my favorite. The pernil with a twist (plantains) sandwich at Sophie's is also a favorite. I'm almost as likely, though, to opt for a good salad, modest sandwich or soup lunchtime so that I can be hungry again for dinner.