Midtown Lunch

Fat Salmon is a trendy Japanese restaurant right by Washington Square Park. It opened in February and has recently gotten its liquor license approved.

The regular menu is long and comes with pretty pictures of sushi. The lunch list is a lot shorter. Besides some too small sushi combos, the only under $10 lunch special was the donburi. I was completely unfamiliar with this dish and was still not quite understanding after an explanation from my dining sidekick. It’s always good to try new things, right?

I learned that donburi is a dish over rice. At Fat Salmon they do a tamago-katsu version, egg with fried cutlets (your choice of chicken or pork). I am not a huge fan of red and green peppers (orange, yellow, and purple are my preference if you were wondering) and this plate was swimming with them. The pork cutlets could not stay crispy under the mound of egg.  The egg and pepper flavors dominated, I would have preferred something more. A drizzle of katsu sauce would have helped. I was definitely full after eating it, but this was not a favorite of mine.

All lunches come with a side salad or an unremarkable, and very small miso soup.

I had my eye on the attractive shrimp tempura lunch bento that my friend got. At $12.50, it is more than I need to spend for lunch, but there is a ton of tempura for your money (though most were veggies, only 2 shrimp came with it). The dumplings and sushi that came with it were better than average for these sort of bento side dishes.

The food took a while to be ready; it might be worth eating your food here rather than doing take out, so you can take advantage of the cute ambiance and the big windows for people watching

THE + (What somebody who likes this place would say)

• Cute ambiance and good people watching
• Tempura lunch bento is done well and comes with a lot of food

THE – (What somebody who doesn’t like this place would say)

• Not many options under $10
• Eggy, pepper covered donburi is not for me

Fat Salmon, 719 Walnut St (@ 7th St), 215 928 8881