Midtown Lunch

Food truck as promotional gimmick sort of hacks us off, but you can’t go wrong with food from New Orleans. Grub Street reports that HBO is promoting a new season of Tremé today by handing out pralines, king cake, and Hubiq’s pie from a truck. The freebie madness begins at Columbus Circle at 10am, goes down to Bryant Park for 11:30am then makes its way down to Flatiron Lunch bounds with stops at Madison Square Park and Union Square in the late afternoon and evening.

Do you wonder what the ML contributors do when they’re not eating lunch in Midtown? (They’re actually pretty easy to stalk!)

Photo courtesy of Chris H/Serious Eats

Chris H. was in New Orleans, where he scored a delicious looking hot muffuletta at Napoleon House, Blondie went to Flushing over the weekend and discovered a love for malaysian food and a new food court that is hopefully opening soon, Ultraclay had a nice looking brunch at Bedford Hill in Bed-Stuy, and Donny got a huge lunch at Kong Kee Food Corp in Chinatown for $3.50.

Around the rest of the ML Universe… Andrea tried the fried chicken at Cornerston in Tribeca, Jamie discovers chaat in a Center City food court, and I had the best biryani and tandoori chicken I’ve ever had in my life at a place in Los Angeles.

Speaking of cheesesteaks… I’ve not so secretly been stalking following the new Kimchi Taco Truck ever since I first heard about them. The Downtown section of ML further piqued my interest, but I missed their first couple of visits to Midtown, once getting there just as they ran out of food. Well, the other week I finally I made it in time to check out their kim-cheesesteak.

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When I saw the great deal for Shorty’s last week, I grabbed it immediately. I’ve been a fan of Philadelphia food ever since I started visiting it regularly ten years ago, and Shorty’s is one of the few places in New York that approaches Philly authenticity.  Looking back at all of our old posts about Shorty’s I was surprised to see cheesesteak this and cheesteak that. Sure, I love a good cheesesteak, but in a bar briefly known as Tony Luke’s, it’s not the first thing that comes to my mind. The original Tony Luke’s in South Philly does serve cheesesteaks, but they are best known for what I consider one of finest delicacies Philadelphia has to offer – The roast pork sandwich.

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It’s been three weeks since the Cupcake Stop Truck and its two brick and mortar locations mysteriously shut down without any warning. We had heard that the owner Lev was leaving to pursue other opportunities and yesterday it was confirmed by their PR machine:

I just wanted to check in with an official statement from CupcakeStop founder Lev Ekster on the status of the company since you’ve covered the company since its launch. He’s unable to comment further during this negotiation period but I will be sure to keep you posted when the next announcement is made. “Within the last two months, I was offered another opportunity that I felt was extremely promising and decided to pursue it. Therefore, we are currently negotiating the sale of my portion of CupcakeStop with several parties.”

Well, that sounds very serious! Cupcakes shouldn’t be about secrecy and negotiations… they should be about sunshine and smiles.

• There’s a Pio Pio on 10th Ave, and they have an $8 lunch special [Eating]
• If you hate your co-workers, eat the brussel sprout sub at No.7 Sub [Eating]
• Au Bon Pain sucks more than it used to [Eating]
• The Cucina on 56th btw. 5+6th has closed [Eating]
• Anybody need tickets to Choice Eats tonight? [MISC]

Not sure if this really is the “World’s Largest Bakesale” (we’ll leave that to Guinness) but it has got to be the world’s largest line to get into a bakesale. Holy mackerel. And that’s just inside!

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