Midtown Lunch

I’ve gotten a lot of emails over the past few weeks asking what happened to Kwik Meal’s Muhammed Rahman.  The cart is still there (on 45th & 6th), serving up their famous lamb and rice platters, but Muhammed has not been seen for awhile- replaced by a woman who now appears to be running the operation during lunch.  Rahman famously used to work at the Russian Tea Room, before starting up Kwik Meal, where he has become widely known for his lamb, which is considered some of the best street meat in the city.

It turns out Muhammed has gotten back into the restaurant business, in an incredily unlikely location… 

Every morning Muhammed still drops the cart off on 45th & 6th (as we chronicled in the “Day in a Life” post from last August), but after a quick set up, he takes off for his new venture- Presidential Pizza on 125th Street (near Frederick Douglas) in Harlem.  That’s right.  A pizza and pasta place in Harlem.  Weird, right?  I spoke with Muhammed on Friday, who seemed pretty excited about his new venture.  He claims the pastas are amazing, and plans on eventually adding his famous lamb over rice to the menu (apparently a lot of his customers are clamoring for it uptown.)  If you can dip pizza in blue cheese dressing, what about a slice dipped in Kwik Meal’s famous white sauce???  (Sorry, just thinking out loud here…) 

The pizza place has been around for awhile, but Rahman only took control of it recently.  Once the place is running on all cylinders, he says he will be back at the Kwik Meal cart more often. For more info about Presidential Pizza, you can check out this Yahoo page, but I must say, it mostly smacks of shill.  Either way, I’d be curious to check the place out, and support our friend who has brought Midtown so much joy via the Kwik Meal cart.  Hopefully he’ll be back soon…