Midtown Lunch

Photo courtesy of Serious Eats: New York

• It’s over $10, but the spicy sausage laffa at Olympic Pita looks awesome [SENY]
• The worst hotel food in the city is (surprise!) almost all in Midtown [NYP]
• Despite its issues the crab bowl at Cafe Zaiya is still good [Tasty Eating]
• If you have to work this weekend, you should have lunch at the 9th Ave. Food Fest [Official Website]
• Ultimate Splurge: Beef 7 ways at MomoMidtown [FeastNY]
• The chicken cheese steak from the Steak Truck is a 9.5 out of 10 [NYSF]
• Angelo Sosa from Xie Xie will be on Top Chef 7 [Grub Street]
• Taylor Swift went to the Carnegie Deli!!! [Facebook]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so every Friday afternoon 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.

A good thing can sometimes be found in an unexpected place. Commenter Adam told me about Pasta Lovers’  1/2 off special over a month ago (on 49th btw. 6+7th), but I hesitated because it smacked of an over priced, generic red-sauce Italian joint. However Pasta Lovers’ time has finally come and this week I spent a lazy afternoon taking full advantage of their happy hour, enjoying some conversation with strangers -and a cute bartender!

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At Midtown Lunch we’re not supposed to like things like 7-Eleven (unless they’re turned into Kwik E Mart’s of course.) For the most part, it’s really just a shinier corner bodega that happens to be a worldwide chain. Their pre-wrapped sandwiches evoke the same reactions as Walgreen sandwiches… but the one redeeming quality of 7-Eleven is their slurpees. Nothing like fluorescent icy drinks to alter my perception of good and evil. Also, there is nothing like free slurpees!

The new 7-Eleven on 8th ave and 37th street has been open for a couple of weeks now, but they’re doing a Grand Opening celebration today. According to a poster hanging in their front window there will be 300 free ‘gift bags’ and there will be free slurpees. The last time the 7-Eleven on 42nd did free slurpees, they only did 2oz cups so your mileage may vary on this. Still, there’s free samples of 7-Eleven food and you could win a free iPad. At this point, 7-Elevens are still a novelty for NYC, and freebies are always good. It goes down today from 5pm to 7pm, so slurpee loving freeloaders- engage!

To make up for their 10 Worst Things to Eat in Times Square list from a few week ago, Robert Sietsema- food critic for the Village Voice- put out his 10 Best Things to Eat in Times Square list today- and with few exceptions it’s basically just a list of Midtown Lunch’s Greatest Hits. He completely ignored the fancy restaurants of Midtown, choosing instead to highlight such under $10 ML classics as Tad’s Steak (see, I’m not crazy for liking it!), Teriyaki Boy, Cafe Edison, Kim’s Aunt Kitchen Cart, Margon, and Sapporo.  The only real shocker of the list is their boundaries, which went as far west as 9th Ave (Gazala Place) and as far north as 56th (Szechuan Gourmet) and yet didn’t include an Honorable Mentions list- even though with those boundaries you clearly could have listed a ton more places.  Like Madeleine the Crepe Lady, who actually has a legit claim to be called “in Times Square”.  It also included Kim’s Aunt Kitchen Cart, but not the Biriyani Cart- which is about a 100 yards closer to Times Square. Go figure.

As with any list like this, it’s easy to pick it apart or make our own (better) suggestions… but in the end, Fork in the Road got what they wanted.  All of you guys to click over and read it!

Thanks to Lunch’er “Michelle” for passing along this good news…  Pro Hot Korean (on 56th btw. 5+6th) has finally reopened, and only a month later than promised!  According to Michelle it looks exactly the same (except for a cold case behind the hot food area) so we’re not exactly sure what the “renovations” were all about… but either way, we’re glad they’re back.

Related:
Pro “Deli” Loses the Bagel, Goes 100% Korean w/ Best New Bi Bim Bap

Now that Downtown has its very own section of the site, what are we going to post on Fridays at 10am? Answer… how about a new column devoted to those lunches just south of the ML boundaries. Every week we’ll post about a lunch in Murray Hill south, Gramercy, Flatiron, and everything in between… or as we’ll call it from now on: Flatiron Lunch.

The Bistro Truck is such a tease. When Zach posted about their opening last year, he mentioned that they might come up to Midtown eventually. Nearly a year later and we still get no love. So, after spending all winter drooling over the tweets about their specials, it was time to take matters into my own hands and hop the bus down 5th Avenue.

Except for some recent difficulties that have left them renting someone else’s truck, they have been showing up to the same spot on 5th Avenue near 17th Street pretty faithfully. That’s just bad news for Midtowners because they serve some great Moroccan specialties along with burgers, frites and regularly changing specials that I’d love to have closer to the office.

Some more on the menu and the food after the jump…

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Yesterday I headed over to check out the Dosa cart on 39th Street and 7th Avenue that “TheFatBaron” had posted about in the forums a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found. I asked one of the Halal vendors and he said the cart was there around 3 weeks ago but he hadn’t seen it since. With the turf wars that are all too common in these parts, we can’t help but wonder if the cart was forced to move by one of the other vendors in the area.  Then again, the weather hasn’t been very nice to unprotected vendors so maybe we can expect them back on the corner next week?  Has anybody seen this cart?  Let us know in the comments.

• Craving a midtown macaron fix? [Midtown Eating]
• Brick Lane’s phaal wins out for the spiciest place to torture a friend [Midtown Eating]
• Nothing says bar snacks like some good ole dried squid [Midtown Connections]
• This list of San Francisco food destinations would make anyone want to pack their bags! [Miscellaneous]
• Any chance the Happy Well Being cart will ever make a midtown comeback? [Midtown Eating]