Midtown Lunch

Back in July, news broke that Steak N Shake was going to be opening near the Late Show theater in Midtown and whether you love it or hate it, it looks like Steak and Shake is getting set to open in the near future on B’way btw. 53+54th. The publicly traded (NYSE:BH) Midwestern chain serves modestly priced burgers, shakes, chili and other diner/comfort food dishes, and while I can’t stand the place it is AHT approved. Appropriately, they’ve chosen their location on Broadway right next to fellow Hoosier, David Letterman. So for those of you that like chain diners, start getting excited.

Off the top of my head I can’t think of any “out” vegan ML Lunchers, but even an avid meat and dairy lover like myself can appreciate the imminent arrival of The Cinnamon Snail, New Jersey’s vegan food truck. Why? Let’s talk doughnuts. Incredibly delicious doughnuts. Read more »

Our fearless leader, Zach Brooks, as well as several profiled Midtown Lunch’ers have publicly expressed how great it would for a Thai cart or food truck to make their presence in Midtown. You see, Thai restaurants are oddly absent from Midtown proper. Sure, 8th and 9th Avenue are practically glutted with Thai restaurants that range from acceptable to awesome, and there’s a handful of serviceable Thai restaurants on the east side, mostly clustered around the lower 50’th streets at 2nd and 3rd avenue – certainly a stretch for the lunch’ers located in central Midtown. Even after 10 minutes of tooling around on Yelp extensive research, I couldn’t locate any Thai restaurants remotely close to Midtown central aside from the laughably bad Thai at Dee Daa and overpriced and underwhelming Thai at Nanking.

This lack of affordable Thai food is why we got so excited when we saw that a new Thai food cart, called Tuk-Tuk Boy, appeared on 50th between 6th & 7th this week.  And clearly we weren’t the only ones.  For the second day in the row the line was 20 people deep for most of lunch yesterday, and we heard that the cart ran out of most items shortly after 1pm.

But you might want to curb that enthusiasm a bit for now…
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Pizza by Cer Te has started offering Thanksgiving pizza this week, according to their twitter. Topped with turkey meatballs, mashed potatoes, cranberries, gravy and mozzarella, the slice sounds like the most delicious gut bomb ever! A call to the store told us the special is supposed to last through next week, and the slice will run you $3.95.  If it’s anything like October’s special Tony Manero slice that Blondie liked so much, we’ll be stoked to try it. Has anybody tried this yet?  If you have, let us know what you think in the comments!

Pizza by Cer Te, 132 East 56th (btw. Park+Lex) (212) 813-2020

Mastercard’s Food Truck Feast promotion continues today with offerings from ten new food trucks. Check out their Facebook page for all the details. Just like the last two weeks, all you have to do is show your Mastercard or tweet using the hashtag #pricelessny to obtain free lunch. This week, the participating trucks include Bian Dang and Pera Turkish on 40th between 5th and 6th 6th Ave b/w 40th & 41st, Chef Samir and Andy’s Italian Ice (a Long Island based dessert truck) on Lexington between 36th and 37th, and Big D’s Grub and Cupcake Crew in the Flatiron. Remember, the promotion only lasts from 11-3 and the lines tend to get long since all the freeloaders come out for a promotion like this. See you there!

Rachel had a delicious looking meal at Village Yokocho, Donny tried the Bunuelos at La Newyorkina, Blondie had pierogis and blintzes in Greenpoint, while Brownie wrote a Dear John to Doughnut Plant, Brian lists his favorite international food in New York and I wrote a piece on Scout Mob about how I learned to love The New York City Marathon.

Elsewhere in the ML universe… Andrea reports that FiDi’s Hot Soup cart has started up a new season, Jamie got everything but the kitchen sink on noodles in Philly and Zach got a pile of big falafel balls in LA.

We never bothered checking out Otarian, the health conscious, eco-friendly shitshow fast food place on 8th Ave. and 56th that shuttered back in January.  But The New York Times hated it, and apparently they weren’t the only ones.  Ouch!  Hope that won’t effect something better moving into the space…

If the new Pad Thai Cart on 50th and 6th has taught us anything this week it’s that the heart of Midtown has a serious craving for thai food.  The cart was packed yesterday (reports had the line at 20+ people) and they ran out of food shortly after 1pm.  But I’m more of a pad see ew kind of girl.  Located on 8th Ave. btw. 42+43rd, Qi Thai isn’t quite as far as the places on 9th and Chris had nice things to say about their reasonable lunch specials back in the spring.

But how is their Pad See Ew?  I needed to find out…

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