Midtown Lunch

Photo courtesy of Eating in Translation

• Skip the chewy squid at Hing Won [Eating in Translation]
• The Oyster Bar lunch counter is a great place to people watch [Fork in the Road]
• The salmon and brown rice salad at Pret is delicious! (Even typing it makes us laugh) [Ramen & Friends]
• MomoMidtown could open this month!? [Eater]
• La Maison du Chocolat is divine [Tasty Eating]
• You can get a black label’ish burger at Nougatine in Jean Georges [Serious Eats]
• Don’t eat at Le Cirque with Joan Rivers [Eater]

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.

I’ve been pushing Zach to let me do an out of bounds happy hour at one of my favorite bars, Live Bait, for months now. Yeah, I know it’s all the way over on 23rd Street, but the N,R trains are practically next door and some things like great food deals and a lively, fun atmosphere are worth going out of your way for. Its reputation as an excellent neighborhood bar has recently infected the forums and LB has started to come up as a possible commenter happy hour location. With this as my leverage I asked again this week if I could do a review and finally broke the poor man down (women have a way of doing that.) With the green light to go forth and imbibe I grabbed my date and headed over to take advantage of their sweet down-south happy hour.

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The signs have gone up for the new Five Guys (on 48th btw. 5+6th) that we told you about back in December. It will be their biggest location in NYC to date, and will hopefully open in June. (Just in time for a gigantic Five Guys vs. Bill’s Bar & Burger face off!) There are also plans for two more Five Guys Midtown Lunch locations this year. One on 34th and 8th (next to the movie theater) which will open in June/July and one for our Downtown lunchers on Fulton Street (nr. Dutch St.) with a July/August opening date.

Related:
I Still Think Five Guys is Awesome, But I’ll Try Not to Compare it to In N Out Burger

I just fell for the $6.50 xiao long bao (aka pork steamed soup dumplings) at Joe’s Shanghai (on 56th btw. 5+6th) so it was kind of an exciting coincidence to see that our ML: Philly correspondent Jamie made a fun, quick video on how to eat the juicy suckers without burning your mouth. Jamie’s bite-slurp-eat method is the standard way to attack xiao long bao, but I like to think there are no rules. My half bite mess is after the jump…

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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. Please give a warm welcome to Jason Lam from the blog Me So Hungry. Every Friday at 10am he’ll post about lunches in Murray Hill south, Grammercy, Flatiron, and everything in between… or as we’ll call it from now on: Flatiron Lunch.

Now that Zach’s out in L.A. eating amazing tacos in the sunshine, how about some taco love for our city in the snow? When my Californian friends tell me that a good taco in New York is nowhere to be found, I’d ask where they’re looking. They’d say, “You know, all you guys have is Chipotle.” Then I’d suggest they take a visit to many of the great Latino neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. Or even closer, the eleven-floor elevator ride down from my office to the Great Burrito in Manhattan.

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• The Jamaican Dutchy will not be serving lamb, but the curry chicken ain’t to shabby [Midtown Eating]
• How do you do your meat? Do you want mustard on your buns? [Miscellaneous]
• While we’re at it, how many toppings can you balance on your dog? [Miscellaneous]
• You can get decent bibimbap at Han Bat and BCD Tofu House [Midtown Eating]
• Stuck watching Mary Poppins with the kids? Maybe Becco is a good pre-theater lunch [Midtown Eating]