Midtown Lunch

Midtown fish taco lovers, your prayers have been answered.  We have it on pretty good authority that Wahoo’s Fish Tacos (a popular West coast fast casual chain with locations in California, Texas and Utah) is looking to open NYC locations by September of this year.  No locations have been finalized yet, but we’re hearing the first one might be somewhere around 56th Street btw. 5+6th Ave.

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 Jeremy, the CEO of Dinevore- a website that lets you recommend restaurants (and keep lists of places you want to try.)

Name: Jeremy

Age: 27

Occupation: I’m the Founder & CEO of Dinevore. We’re a platform for making and sharing restaurant recommendations.

Where in Midtown do you Work?: Most days I work out of General Assembly, an awesome coworking space in Flatiron. I used to work in Times Square.

Favorite Kind of Food: If it’s been cooked with love, I’ll probably like it.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: I’m really not a fan of cottage cheese.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: Pernil, octopus salad or a Cuban sandwich with moros and maduros at Margon (on 46th btw. 6+7th), Shack Burger at Shake Shack (on 44th & 8th), soup and sandwich lunch deal at Gramercy Tavern, pad kee mao at Rhong Tiam Express (on 21st btw. Park+B’way).

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When Jeremiah went to 4Food (Madison+40th) to create the “ML Garbage Plate Burger“-which you should be getting-he had a plan. When I went to try out this 4Food ‘there’s a hole in your burger’ silliness, I had no plan. I wanted something that would preferably come out to less than $10, taste decent but still be sort of substantial. After being walked through the menu by a very patient cashier, I decided I was in the mood for a Greek burger. Midtown does have a lack of decent cheap Greek burgers.

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Baked by Melissa’s $1 cupcake bites didn’t get the greatest reaction from you guys when it opened near Grand Central late last year, but it appears as if somebody music like the place because they are pressing on!  The location on 7th Ave. btw 38+39th that we told you about last month is now open.  Thanks to @muusic for sending along the photo.

After a tip earlier in the week from Lunch’er Daniel, I walked west to investigate the changing of the guard at 885 9th Avenue between 57th and 58th Street. And I was surprised to see Terakawa  Ramen up and running already. Looks like they’ve been open since Monday and have a few lunch items under $10, including the namesake tonkotsu ramen, Sho Yu, and Miso Ramens. $2 extra will also snag you a side of pork dumplings, fried rice, or chicken curry.

This isn’t the first time this particular company has taken over a former Teriyaki Boy location. We’re still not sure what’s happening to the Teriyaki Boy on 7th Ave. that closed two months ago, but a Terakawa replaced a Teriyaki Boy in Grammercy back in 2009. I hope to try the ramen some time next week, but if anybody has already been to this tiny location (or the one on Lexington btw. 23+24th), please weigh in with some comments.

If you follow Momofuku Milkbar on Twitter, it does sort of seem like the original bakery in the East Village gets all the fun. They’re bigger (and they just expanded!) so they can carry more items. Perhaps the biggest rub (at least for me) was that the East Village soft serve menu rotates while the midtown location has been serving the same cereal milk and salty pistachio since they launched. This week however, that’s all about to change. According to Eater “the soft serve flavors will rotate at all of the Milk Bars at the same time, once every three months” and according to @momomilkbar they now have blackberry/kaffir lime soft serve. Can’t wait to try it out. Early adopters, let us know what you think in the comments.

Ma Peche and Milk Bar, 15 W. 56th St. btw 5th+6th Ave, 212-555-1212

The other week, we got a peek inside the newly opened Qi Thai restaurant (43rd St & 8th Ave), and I recently dropped by for lunch. Given the location, just a stone’s throw from Times Square, I came with the most modest of expectations. Those expectations were, for the most part, met and exceeded by this fledgling restaurant, which serves fairly priced, moderate-to-good food in a startlingly gorgeous dining room.
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