Midtown Lunch

India Jones’ butter chicken is just one of the things you’ll be able to eat at this weekend’s Vendy Awards (along with grilled cheese, Mexican hot dogs, BBQ, tacos, and quesadillas)

• NEWS This is what you should be doing on Saturday! [The Vendy Awards]
• KOREATOWN Pollo ala Brasa is expanding [Squid Ink]
• KOREATOWN The banchan alone makes Mapo worth visiting [Food GPS]
• DOWNTOWN Uncle John’s Cafe is now serving HK style waffles!? [Dig Lounge]
• DOWNTOWN Chichen Itza‘s pork edges out Flor de Yucatan [Squid Ink]
• DOWNTOWN Another lackluster reveiw of the Charcoal Grill [Noms Not Bombs]
• WEST L.A. Ramenya offers some of the best noodles west of the 405 [Squid Ink]
• WEST L.A. Sweet Rose Creamery is finally open [Savory Hunter;EAT LA]
• FAIRFAX The preztel roll at Delibar looks amazing [Eating L.A.]
• MOBILE A Ludo Fried Chicken truck is in the works [Grub Street]
• MOBILE A profile of the Dim Sum Truck [Serious Eats]

Since I moved here from NYC in January I’ve been attacking the street food scene like a man who hasn’t eaten in a year (a starving yet incomprehensibly fat man.) The debate over what city has the best street food in the U.S. is too much for me to take on today, but there is one thing I have noticed- despite all the difficulties trucks in this city face every day, it is still far easier to operate a truck in Los Angeles than in New York. And to prove it, the popular Le Gamin Truck (an offshoot of the constantly in flux chain of small NYC bistros) has just spent the past week driving cross country to set up shop in sunny Los Angeles.

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Man, this city loves their chicken.  It seems as if every go-to, fallback lunch spot in town has some kind of white meat boneless chicken breast option, as a sandwich or salad, and more often then not topped with avocado. Don’t get me wrong… in the right hands, a boneless chicken breast can be made into a drool inducing Midtown Lunch that still haunts my dreams a week later.  But not everybody cooks like Jon & Vinny.

Of course the boneless white meat chicken breast is only one side of the massive L.A. chicken loving food scene.  On the other end of the spectrum you’ve got the Midtown Lunch’ish chicken spots.  The on-the-bone, skin wrapped whole chicken spots whose economics defy all logic.  Your Zankous, your Pollo ala Brasas (on Western), and of course Dino’s Burgers- the Pico institution where most people ignore the namesake item for their real signature dish:  a pile of french fries, topped with a red spice marinated greasy half chicken.

Check out the delicious red mess, after the jump.

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Uncle John’s Ham & Eggs, the 35+ year old diner on 8th btw. Olive & Hill, is not exactly a hidden Downtown gem.  But it isn’t Philippe’s either. It lives somewhere in between, and for those who work or live or breakfast downtown, it’s borderline legendary.  For me, it’s a no-brainer Midtown Lunch.  The idea is so simple in its genius, that some might be confused at first by its brilliance.  On one hand its unfamiliar, on the other it’s so familiar you can’t understand how this place isn’t a nationwide franchise.  Breakfast diner + Chinese food.   That’s it.  Think Chinese roast pork with eggs, hash browns and toast.  Or corned beef hash and eggs over fried rice.

I first heard of Uncle John’s last month, when Dig Lounge (run by yesterday’s profiled lunch’er Matt) reported that Uncle John’s would be opening a second location on Grand btw. 8+9th, in the Stillwater Hotel.  I couldn’t wait that long, and immediately rushed to their original location… only to find it closed! For good (so sad).  Thankfully their new location on Grand opened last week, so on Monday I headed over for some over easy egg topped salt and pepper pork chops.

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As is customary on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a random reader to get their recommendations for the best spots to lunch near their work. This week it’s Matt, an interactive producer who works on the westside, but is looking for some good shawarma downtown.

Name: Matt

Age: 34

Occupation: Interactive Producer (and blogger at Dig Lounge)

Where in L.A. do you Work?: Where Culver City and Marina Del Rey meet.

Favorite Kind of Food: Such a tough question. Classic American comfort food would fit a lot into one genre I guess. But my first real job was slinging pizzas, lasagna, manicotti, et al, at a small Italian cafe in Whittier, so I would have to say Italian too.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Maybe African. On a Jungle Food Marathon with some other bloggers we stopped in at Nkechi African Cafe and tried some Ogbono Soup and Egusi Soup. It just didn’t agree with my palette at all.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch: The newly opened Mendocino Farms in the Marina (4724 Admiralty Way), their sandwiches are so good. Otherwise I go to Taqueria Sanchez (4525 Inglewood Blvd.) The lomo there is outstanding. When a taco joint is filled with the local hispanic residents and workers, you know you’re in the right place. It’s one of the few places you get lunch for under 5 bucks on the West Side.

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I don’t know what “Museum Dining” evokes in your mind, but for me two things immediately pop into my head: “overpriced” and “mediocre”.  Having a captive audience is never a good thing when it comes to eating (I’m looking at you theme parks and airports), and cafes inside museums tend to fall into that category.  So when I heard that Cafe Hammer, the Wolfgang Puck run cafe inside the Hammer Museum in Westwood had a grilled cheese lunch special with a soup and salad for $8.75 (!?!) I was kind of shocked.  (As was the person who recommended it to me.)  Add to that a rare roast beef sandwich with horseradish aoli for $8.50, kobe beef sliders for $7.25 (!?), and the hammer joe (ham-turkey-swiss-coleslaw-russian-dressing) for $8.50, all in an open to the public, beautiful atrium setting, and you have all the makings of a great midtown lunch.

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