Midtown Lunch

Every Tuesday we turn over the site to a different Midtown Lunch’er for his or her recommendations for the best lunch in Midtown. This week it’s Kyle, a graphic designer who is not picky but is kind of scared of street meat.

Name: Kyle

Age: 33

Occupation: Graphic Designer

Where in Midtown do you Work?: 39th & 6th

Favorite Kind of Food: I’m not picky AT ALL when it comes to food. I’ll try anything once. Favorite is hard to say, maybe Thai. I love a (medium/hot) red curry. Could eat it everyday. I also like anything that comes with sour cream. Sour cream has to be my all time favorite condiment, so I like Mexican food. Have you tried the tater tots at HB? If not you should! I like sushi, but don’t eat it a lot (not sure why), I’m kinda a bar girl, so a really good burger and maybe some chicken wings to start, (with a cold beer) is always good! (but not normally for lunch).

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Again, not picky, but I don’t care for Italian food, unless it’s pizza. And I will only eat pizza in the NYC metro area. I’m not big on pasta and most Italian restaurants have too much breading on everything and they smother it in sauce.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: Madeline (on 39th btw. 5+6th), CRISP (on 40th btw. B’way+6th), Hale and Hearty, Szechuan Gourmet (on 39th btw. 5+6th), Olympic Pita (or whatever it’s called now), Cafe Zaiya (the one in the book store on 6th), Macaron Café (on 36th btw. B’way+7th). Their Tuesday special, is wonderful, and so is their farm salad and you have to pick up a macaron too. I like to try new things so I visit midtownlunch everyday to see what’s going on and what good. In the summer I love to go to one of the delis get a sandwich or salad and sit in Bryant Park. I keep a blanket under my desk at work for such days.

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Shilla, the Korean restaurant on 32nd btw. B’way+5th that has been known to offer $5 and $6 take out lunch specials, has been doing a little PR lately… inviting bloggers to come sample food for free so they’ll write about it. Their sit down lunch specials are $9.95-$14.95 and include kimchi jjigae, gop dol (a dolsot bi bim bap sounding kind of thing shown on the left), plus a galbi box for $11.95. As good as it looks– we here at ML don’t accept special free meals from the places we write about, but we’ll gladly give the free food to you! Shilla has agreed to let us give away the free tasting menu to one lucky Midtown Lunch’er and a guest. Just comment below and let us know why you should be the one, and you’re entered to win. Contest ends on Friday at 5pm. Good luck!

Photo courtesy of Ultraclay

There is no shortage of 99 cent pizza on the fringes of Midtown…  9th Avenue, 8th Avenue, Lexington and 3rd. But now it looks like the $1 slice is finally going to land smack dab in the center of Midtown.  2 Bros, the St Marks institution that started invading Midtown last year, will be opening its 3rd Midtown location on 46th btw. 5+6th.  They plan on being open sometime this week.

Related:
$1 Pizza Not For Bloggers, Cabbies, or Pizza Lovers… It’s For Homeless People

Wait a second… we have pretzels.  We have pizza.  And we have Philly cheesesteaks.  So why is it that we have not attempted the “Philly Prizzasteak”?  Jamie shows us how it’s done over on Midtown Lunch: Philadelphia, creating this South Street special using a slice from Lorenzo’s, a soft pretzel from Jim’s Pretzels, and a cheesesteak from Jim’s Steaks. Who will step forward and accept the challenge of making one of these in Midtown?!  Also making us jealous today… the po’boys and the potato wedge stuffed chicken sandwich that Andrea discovered Downtown, and the red chicken grease covered french fries and Chinese food w/ eggs and home fries (!?!)  that Zach ate in Los Angeles last week.

When the Mini Picanteria: El Guayaquileño truck showed up in midtown I was incredulous. The Guayaquileño trucks mainly stick to the outer borough of Queens with its mother restaurant located at 94-54 Corona Ave, Elmhurst. The term Picanteria is commonly used to describe family-owned eateries that serve inexpensive home-style meals and Guayaquileño is the term for the people of that region of Ecuador. The Guayaquileño truck follows that tradition and now offers midtown something rare and completely lacking in our street food scene: Ecuadorian food from the city of Guayaquil. Ultraclay checked out their tripe soup and I went back this week to test the boundaries of safe eating by trying the ceviche and my favorite: goat stew.

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This interesting news broke on Friday… according to Fortune, the owners of Bill’s Bar & Burgers are having difficulty securing a loan to build out their proposed restaurant in Rockefeller Center. This doesn’t mean it won’t happen though… according to one of the investors, they’ll get the loan eventually. The terms just won’t be as favorable.  Admittedly, we here at Midtown Lunch don’t know a ton about the economics involved with leasing restaurant space in Rock Center…  but we are pretty sure that Bill’s is going to do gangbusters business. So either the rent is too high to support a place where burgers are under $10 (no matter what kind of volume they do), or banks don’t like making money.  I wonder which one it is.  [via Eater]

Related:
Bill’s Bar & Burger Coming to Rock Center!

Boi’s Vietnamese restaurant empire, which already has two banh mi offshoots in Midtown East (Boi to Go and Boi Sandwich), will grow by one this week when Boi Noodles opens on 41st 40th btw. 7+8th.  The new location, which is scheduled to open on Thursday in the old Sophie’s Cuban space, will specialize in pho, but they will also sell sandwiches, wraps, salads, rice bowls, and noodle bowls- just like Boi Sandwich on 3rd Ave- plus Vietnamese coffee and bubble tea.  We’re kind of curious how it will compare to Chicken House (on 36th btw. 7+8th), which added banh mi, bun, and a pretty mediocre pho to their menu last year.

Check out the full menu from Boi Noodles, after the jump…

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