Midtown Lunch

Bella Napoli (on 49th btw. 6+7th) has long been a favored pizza spot for my office mates for their quality grandma’s slice. The other day as I was walking to the subway I noticed they were sporting some new signage touting 5 buck 25th anniversary lunch specials. Naturally I had to check it out.

Unfortunately I didn’t read the fine print–the $5 special is your choice of pasta plus your choice of salad. I’ve been to enough Italian funerals, baptisms, First Communions etc to recognize a skippable tray of baked ziti, so I opted to trade up for pasta plus meat–picking out the spinach and cheese stuffed chicken breast and the roasted vegetable farfalle for $7.60 (tax included). And bonus, it comes with a huge Italian roll.

If you like your pasta heavy on the garlic and heavy on the olive oil, this is for you. To benefit the most from the deal, it seems like it would be worth it to make it an early lunch since the food first comes out at 11–this would likely serve the sauce covered pastas better as well as the meat, which can get dried out after too much time on a steam tray. My chicken was still fairly tender, but this was at around 12:30–which is practically breakfast for a late luncher like me.

For me the pasta proved to be a bit greasy and heavy, but if you’re a fan you should be pretty excited for this lunch special.  I might go with my co-workers and try the grandma slice next time…