Midtown Lunch

My kid sleeping through Lunch’er Tom’s attempt to break Don Lerman’s Go Go Curry Time

• You can get pretty delicious looking breakfast sandwiches at wichcraft all day long [Blondie and Brownie]
• 2 Bros 99 Cent Pizza is hoping to open their new 9th Ave. location store on Tuesday [Grub Street]
• If you want fried food, but only have $3 in your wallet- chicken house is the only option! [BLD Project]
• An out of bounds generic deli on 34th & 9th is now serving curry and roti on Wednesdays and Fridays [Fressa Girl]
• KFC’s new grilled chicken beats all competition (including Ranch 1) in a taste test [Epi-Log]
• Apparently the cuban sandwiches at Margon taste delicious with Pellegrino [Me So Hungry]
• Josh Ozersky weighs in on the burgers at HB Burger [Feedbag]
• The pies from Little Pie Company look pretty damn good [Food in Mouth]
• Vegetarians beware: the dough at Golosi is made from rendered pork fat [TONY via Elaine Perlov]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week, our Happy Hour Correspondent “Mamacita” will post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap.

My intrepid search for Midtown’s best free-buffet happy hour lead me this week to “Broadway” Langan’s Pub & Restaurant. Langan’s free appetizers are not widely publicized, perhaps because they don’t want us freeloaders making a dinner of it? The claim is they have a free buffet for patrons drinking at the bar, but after that whole Channel 4 happy hour failure, I felt a bit of trepidation. Would they pull the bait and switch? I called and they assured me of the happy hour so I rounded up the troops and set forth to feast on free food and good drinks.

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The complaints have been pouring in since it was reported that retired professional eater Don “Moses” Lerman has entered the Go Go Curry Eating Championship. His preliminary time (to eat 2 small portions of curry with rice) was an amazing one minute, and a lot of competitors are already getting discouraged.  After all, what are the chances a layman is going to beat Lerman.  (Pro competitive eaters are banned from entering any events unsanctioned by the IOCE.)

In fact, Midtown Lunch’er Tom- who agreed to be our representative in the competition, backed out half way through his “training”. The video, plus Go Go Curry’s response to the complaints, is after the jump…

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Always Hungry has a write up on Tabla’s Indian street food “cart”, which is set up in front of the restaurant located next to Madison Square Park. It’s a little pricey, and way out of the Midtown Lunch boundaries- but the piece distinguishes between the kati roll (which we all know very well) and the “Frankie”, a term you are seeing more and more in NYC.

A Frankie is an Indian wrap best described as a Mumbai burrito. The construction of a frankie sounds very similar to a Kati (Roti) roll, but among the Indian community they could not be more different.

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A few months ago FreeFoods NYC made the exciting announcement that their Midtown Lunch Sandwich Challenge Entry, the amazing duck reuben, was going to be permanently added to the menu (in addition to a few more Midtown Lunch’ish sounding sandwiches.)  However, they neglected to mention one incredibly important thing:  the Duck Reuben is now $12.  How dare they serve up a $10 sandwich, get us all addicted to it, and then raise the price out of Midtown Lunching range.  It’s a travesty.  Duck reuben, you are dead to me.

Thankfully, there is an under $10 brisket sandwich replacement that is already getting raves.

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I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it. I have a problem. The funny thing is others stopped by the newly opened Panda International (on 46th btw. 5+6th), took one look at the food, and walked out. From Lunch’er “Gustad”

“Went with some coworkers, and just as we were walking in, 3 guys walked out laughing. so i asked what was wrong, and they said it looked too sketchy. we continued walking in to come to the same conclusion. in their warm trays, i saw meatballs and other italian dishes. what the hell!!?? their menu had chinese dishes for 10-11 bucks (the stuff that is usually 6-8 at a real chinese joint). and heros, smoothies, etc… very odd. i saw a mexican in the kitchen and two white people up front. i can eat at the junkiest of chinese places, and i’m not saying this place looks junkie, but it was very far from appetizing. we left without food.”

I stayed and ate.

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College Humor stars Jake & Amir visited Papa Perrone’s Truck the other day, and VendrTV was there to catch the action. Why Papa Perrone’s? Because apparently pizza is “college food”. Kind of a stretch if you ask me (since I’m pretty sure no college students come to Midtown for pizza) but you know what would be college food? A Rutgers Grease Truck sandwich (which coincidentally enough VendrTV visited a few weeks ago.) I’ve been begging for this since we started the Midtown Lunch Sandwich Challenge. Will somebody please step up to the plate and make this mozzarella stick/chicken finger/french fry monstrosity happen? Papa Perrone? Nino’s? Are you listening?

Papa Perrone’s actual sandwich entry (before the update) does make it into the video (along with some great video of the big Papa himself), and you can see it after the jump…

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