Midtown Lunch

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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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