Midtown Lunch

Photo courtesy of James Boo from the Eaten Path

• Clearly Pam Real Thai is worth traveling out of bounds for [The Eaten Path]
• Bouchon Bakery’s nutter butter is a force to be reckoned with [Fork in the Road]
• Anthony Bourdain is excited to try Ramen Totto [Grub Street]
• Menchanko Tei is where MLers eat after Happy Hour [Feisty Foodie]
• The espresso granita from Joe the Art of Coffee looks very refreshing [SENY]
• Want a sneak peek at the newly designed McDonald’s on 46th?  Yeah, neither did we. [CCG]

This was yesterday… and today isn’t much better.

If you were super excited about trying out the brand new Eddie’s Pizza Truck, you might want to give them a bit more time to get settled.  Yesterday was insanity because they were giving away free pizza, but today hasn’t been much better.  Slice has been twittering from their location in the Flatiron, where the lines have been long, and pizzas are taking just over 30 minutes from the time you order.

Related:
Eddie’s Pizza Truck Hits The Streets Today (With Free Pizza)

You are so right. FOOD TRUCKS are the real problem…

The backlash against City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s new food truck law generated a lot of press yesterday, but sadly it doesn’t seem to be deterring her (in fact, she seems to be relishing it.)  Lappin represents a district on the Upper East Side, and according to DNA Info she was moved to propose the law by a Halal Truck that parks on 86th Street and Lexington from 10am to 11pm. She also complained about a “dumpling truck” (Rickshaw parks on the UES on Fridays for a few hours in the afternoon) and a taco truck.  The sad thing is, most popular trucks in the city don’t park in the same spot for 13 hours straight- but Lappin’s law punishes everybody, by revoking the license of any truck that gets 3 parking tickets in a year.

But what bothered us the most yesterday was her comments to CBS TV.  When confronted with the facts that food trucks represent an incredibly small portion of the commercial vehicles who park illegally every day, and asked why she doesn’t go after FedEX and Fresh Direct as well her response was “simple – she says no one is complaining about those other companies.”

Actually, that’s about as untrue and misinformed as her telling the press that this law will not put food trucks out of business.  I wrote her a later to address these issues, hoping for a response.

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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.

Wappa Wappa! I’m back, filling in this week for UltraClay. Here I’m covering Curry Hill’s Chennai Garden and their vegetarian Indian lunch buffet. What happened to me? Did I turn vegetarian? No, but I’m down for the $6.95 all you can eat or $6.95 all you can fill lunch box to go. Take the jump to see how I did…
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This week the NYPost, Time Out New York, and NYMag filed decent, but not great, reviews on Ma Peche (our one and only Momofuku restaurant) and we wanted to quickly say DON’T FUCK THIS UP FOR US CRITICS!  We don’t get a lot of worthy splurges in these parts, and we’ve been begging for this particular one since 2007.  And FYI… 56th Street isn’t in the East Village.  Oh, and Ma Peche is awesome.  (Speaking of which, they just added a $25 prix fixe lunch to the online reservations system– you know- for those of you who don’t place the same price restrictions on lunch as we do.)

• New Midtown Lunch’er needs help near Lex & 41st [Midtown Eating]
• Cer Te has extended the soft shelled crab sandwich through June [Midtown Eating]
• El Camioncito taco truck is back!! [Midtown Eating]
• This is Why Your Fat is gone, but ML makes a damn good replacement [Miscellaneous]

The World Cup begins this Friday with Mexico vs. South Africa at 10am and Uruguay vs. France at 2:30. If you’re a fútbol fan you might want to take an extended lubricated lunch, just make sure you grab some Altoids before heading back to work because most bars with a TV screen will be broadcasting the games and offering drink specials. I saw this poster at P.J. Carney’s Pub on 7th ave near 57th street. They’re starting drink specials at 10am… yea you read that right. There’s probably way better soccer bars in the Village but hey Midtown needs to represent yo! So the question is, if you plan on watching any of the World Cup games, where are you going in Midtown? Not everyone is going to be able to keep up with the ESPN/Kogi truck (although the ML Twitter Tracker is certainly going to try). To help you out I’ve put together a list of possible pubs for lunch or happy hour World Cup viewing.

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