Midtown Lunch

I’ve been a huge fan of Michael Voltaggio’s Ink.Sack ever since it opened a year and a half ago. See, MVolt could have opened a typical sandwich annex next to his popular restaurant Ink, charging upwards of $12-15 for sandwiches that people who eat lunch on Melrose would be more than happy to shell out the cash for. But he went the other way, offering a mostly take out menu of smallish sandwiches for $5-8 with great ingredients and interesting flavors that cheap fatsos like me would like. A pork filled, chicharron topped banh mi. House made corned beef and pastrami. A Cuban sandwich. Sadly, the chicken skin and liver mousse sandwich is gone, but there is still the cold fried chicken sandwich and the Spanish godfather.

And this week they added 6 new sandwiches to their menu, four of which contain an ingredient that pretty much improves anything it touches: fried eggs. And the best part is, they’re available All. Day. Long.

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I like the cheap “authentic” dives you find in {Insert any Asian country here} Town just as much as the next guy (actually, probably way more than the next guy.)  But I also love when young chefs take Asian food out of the dive dive and into the hipster dive, giving the food a punk rock edge without muting the flavors that made you love the cuisine in the first place. I’m talking your Momofukus, your A-Frames, your Mission Chineses.  So naturally I was a bit excited when Night + Market started getting good reviews. The Thai street food restaurant from Chef Kris Yenbamroong is ”hidden” inside Talesai, a West Hollywood Thai dinosaur owned by his parents.  Night + Market is only open at night (naturally), but when I heard that Yenbamroong also runs the kitchen of Talesai I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of lunch you could get at the parent restaurant.

Finding out that they offer a $10 lunch special sealed the deal.

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It’s a sad truth, but many people probably stopped reading this post after the title. Made their mental note (“Tochka = Good. Got it.  Let’s move on.”)  And sure enough, it’s those people that will inevitably leave the comment a week from now telling me how terrible Tochka is.  Because the newly open flatbread sandwiches place on Sunset in West Hollywood is really just ok,  an importantly tidbit that you now know because you actually decided to read on. I wouldn’t drive across town for anything on their menu, but if I worked in the neighborhood there is something I’d go back for.  Something kind of awesome.  Something that I never even really liked, until I tried Tochka’s version…

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I don’t hate chicken, but I do reserve the right to hate L.A.’s obsession with chicken. I’ve never met so many people who love chicken, or (the horror) will only eat chicken. Fat man cannot live on chicken alone (unless it’s deep fried, covered in garlic sauce, or sauteed with french fries.) Ok, so maybe hate is a strong word.  I don’t hate chickenterians, some of my best friends are chickentarians. I just like to make fun of them for missing out on all the joys of beef, lamb, seafood, goat (yes goat!), and of course pork.  So if the future me had told the past me that I would end up eating at a place called Chicken Lady Cafe, a catering specialist in the shadow of the Beverly Center, and love it, the old me would have proactively punched the new me in the face.

Chicken Lady Cafe?  Catering?  The Beverly Center?  How did this happen?  I’ll tell you how it happened.  Chicken. Fingers.

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It’s been almost two years since I moved from New York to Los Angeles, and I have to say I’m almost at the point where there is nothing I miss about lunching in the Big Apple. Sure, I’d like to have a decent $2 slice available 15 feet from the front door of my house. And I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there will never be a proper plate of chicken and lamb over rice with white sauce and hot sauce in this city- after all if the Guru can’t really find one, nobody can. But beyond that, I can’t think of too much that NYC has for lunch that L.A. doesn’t do at least as well (if not better, if we’re talking ethnic food.) And that’s especially true now that I’ve discovered Ta-eem on Melrose.

Israeli style falafel is everywhere in Midtown Manhattan, and while I finally found an excellent (albeit expensive) version at Habayit in West L.A., there was still one thing missing from L.A.’s falafel repertoire: laffa. And not the generic, store bought bullshit lavash that a lot of places around here try to pass off as laffa (I’m looking at you Pita Bar & Grill!) I’m talking the fresh baked, super fluffy, gigantic discs of bread that when rolled around falafel make a pita pocket look like a tea sandwich. So when a Kosher friend (apparently real Jews can’t eat pig, but they can have lunch with one) told me that a falafel place on Melrose served up real deal laffa, I got excited. Very excited.

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If you work near La Cienega and Melrose chances are you’ve been to ink.sack for lunch by now. (You have been to ink.sack by now, right? Because if not, what the hell are you waiting for?! Go. Now! Well not now. It’s closed on Mondays. But go soon. It’s really good.) For those who have already been to ink.sack too many times, or don’t feel like waiting in line, or need lunch on a Monday, what are the other options in the area? Real Food Daily? No. Urth Caffe! You’re joking, right? What about La Cienega Kabob House? Now that looks like my kind of place…

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When the first photos of Ink.Sack, Michael Voltaggio’s new sandwich shop on Melrose, hit the twittersphere I jumped into cautious hysteria mode-  furiously clicking for any indication of whether or not this place would be cheap enough to qualify as a Midtown Lunch.  The best look I got was this blurry photo, where I could kind of make out a 5 next to each sandwich.  Shit.  Of course the sandwiches are $15 each. This guy is not just a freakin Top Chef, but probably the most famous Top Chef there is.  Oh well.  Fuck it.

And then the greatest, most shocking, news of all time hit the blogosphere.  I was imagining the 1.  The sandwiches were only $4-6.  Is this guy nuts?  What happened to cashing in on your success?  Rent on Melrose ain’t cheap buddy. Buuuuuuuut there was a catch (there always is).  The sandwiches are small.  And the debate, which will likely rage on for years to come, officially began.  Do you need 2 or 3 sandwiches to make a filling lunch?  2 would be fine to keep me under $10, but 3 would be too expensive.  So… how small are they really?  Most of the photos out there have been inconclusive. But let’s put it this way: if the guys-who-have-small-penises-drive-big-cars adage applies to sandwiches, Michael Voltaggio must have a gigantic penis.

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