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 Brian, a food cart tour guide who loves to eat everything (but is scared of sparkling water.)

Name: Brian

Age: 32

Occupation: Tour Guide and Host of a food webseries

Where in Midtown do you Work?: I give Food Cart tours for Urban Oyster on Sixth Avenue between 42nd and 52nd Street

Favorite Kind of Food: I seriously love it all. If somebody is serving it, odds are I’ll eat it. I do have a soft spot for Japanese food. I love the delicate, clean flavors. I’m also a sucker for smoky dishes (BBQ, bourbon, smoked fish, baba ghanoush). And of course, I can’t walk by a food cart or truck without giving it a try. But the most exciting foods to me are new discoveries whether it’s unusual flavor combinations, an ethnic dish that I’m trying for the first time, or the uncovering of a hidden unpublicized restaurant.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: I really do eat it all, but I’m not a big fan of offal (I do like sweetbreads). And sparkling water has always freaked me out.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: I love the lunch at Yakitori Totto (on 55th btw. B’way+8th)- specifically the chicken thigh yakitori special is an awesome deal. Hakata Ramen at Menchanko Tei (on 55th btw. 5+6th) is surprisingly rich, creamy, and has a great balance of flavors. It’s still my go-to ramen spot in midtown. Café Edison (on 47th btw. B’way+8th) for classic and cheap diner food (love the blintzes and the matzoh ball soup). I also much prefer the burgers at both Burger Joint (on 56th btw. 6+7th) and Five Guys to the overhyped ones at Shake Shack. And the lines are much easier to manage. And one last Japanese: After the tour, I often wander east and get any number of rice balls from Oms/b (on 45th btw. Lex+3rd). I particularly like the Gorgeous Football Rice Ball and the Lobster Salad. And of course, dessert at Macaron Cafe.

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Let’s face it – It’s only February, and we still have at least a month of cold weather left before we can put away the sweater, scarves and jackets. Bundling up is one way of beating the cold weather, but the contributors here at Midtown lunch like to reach for a hot bowl of soup to warm up. We’ve asked each of the contributors to share a favorite bowl of soup in Midtown, so read on to find out where we like to get our soup on.

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It looks as if the 2 Bros. Pizza on 46th btw. 5+6th is now extending the $1 philosophy to breakfast, offering 2 eggs on a roll for just a buck from 7-10:30am. More relevant to this particular site though is their revamped, expanded burger counter menu, which now has more items, toppings and condiments.
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Jjam ppong, extra spicy from Hyo Dong Gak. Photo by Dave Cook

• Hyo Dong Gak also makes a good version of jjam ppong [Eating in Translation]
• More details about Angelo Sosa’s Social Eatz, coming to Midtown East [FitR]
• Mono+Mono’s closing has been confirmed [Grub Street]
• A fond farewell to 23 year old Zarela [Wined and Dined]

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

A couple of friends invited me to Blackstones this week to shoot some pool and grab a beer. There are plenty of places to caress a cue on the Westside, like my divey favorites Daves, Blue Ruin, and Bullmoose, but it was good to know there are Eastside options as well –albeit less clad in taxidermy and lingerie.

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We’ve always had a working theory that burger places in Midtown get more and more packed as the week goes on… and this only adds to our thesis.  This is The Counter in Times Square (on B’way and 41st) 5 minutes ago.  Shake who?  I guess there is room for a gazillion burger places in Midtown…

Becoming a mobile vendor is not quite as easy as ehow would have you believe. So in anticipation of Softee Season 2011 we’ve asked Chrissy (aka Miss Softee) to show us the process of what it takes to become an ice cream vendor in Midtown. We’ll meet the potential new vendors, and track their progress through the selection and training process as all of the candidates make their way towards being a full fledged Mr. Softee vendor.  Here’s Part 1.  Take it away Miss Softee!

Everyone wants to drive an ice cream truck, but not everyone has what it takes to stick around and see the job through. While the joys of slinging the cream far outweigh the cons in my mind, the hours are long, the work can by very physical, and the midtown route is demanding!! So, this season, I’ve been given the opportunity to help bring on new drivers to our team, train them, and work as a day-to-day manager. I’m going to share my knowledge of the industry and business with them and they’ll all be working throughout Midtown with special toppings, happy hour, and more! Read more »

Every Friday our man UltraClay goes south of the ML boundaries in search of a delicious lunch. Sometimes it’s Murray Hill south or the Flatiron District, sometimes Gramercy and everything in between- but we just like to call it Flatiron Lunch.

Ok, it’s not quite this warm today. But it’s as good as we’re going to get for a while. Next week, the temperatures drop back to the 40’s, then the 30’s. In the name of encouraging our readers to get some sun and to support the food cart and truck proprietors who have had a rough time of it this winter, we figure it’s as good a time as any to do a round up of the Flatiron Lunch area trucks. Check it out after the jump.

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