Midtown Lunch

We received sad news in the comments last week. Sam, the halal cart vendor on 35th Street, near 6th Avenue suffered a heart attack while setting up for business Thursday morning and died shortly afterward. Last year, his cart caught my attention due to his method of mixing the sauces in with the meat when on the griddle. The technique helped get him a respectable 7th place in last year’s street meat-palooza.

More importantly though, Sam was warm and friendly to all of his customers. During my visits to the cart, he flirted with the ladies, joked with the guys and put everyone at ease. Days after I wrote the post about his cart, he had it printed up and displayed it proudly for all to see.  His hospitality and pride in his work will be greatly missed.

Photo courtesy of Robert Sietsema/Fork in the Road

• The pizza sandwich is the only good thing at Potbelly [FitR]
• A “Serious” look at Cafe China [SENY]
• Mexicue is now serving something called a “Burrito Bullet” [Eater]
• Steak n Shake set to open in Mid January [Grub Street]
• Jamaican Dutchy is opening an outpost in San Francisco!? [Eater]
• Foodparc’s 3Bs is now serving more than just a great burger [AHT]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so it seems only natural to have a happy hour column on the site. Every Friday afternoon 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.

Sunday marks the 77th birthday of the one and only king of Rock n’ Roll: Elvis!  So slip on your blue suede shoes because it’s time to take care of business (TCB baby!) at these local bars:

• Rodeo Bar is having a Elvis Birthday Bash featuring live rockabilly music by The Lustre Kings. Happy hour is 4-9pm with $7 lime and strawberry margaritas, $4 drafts, and $4 wine specials. Plus check out their free happy hour food and all day Recession Special (A can of PBR and shot of House Whiskey) for $7.
• Bierhaus will get their jailhouse rock on this Monday, Jan 9th. Highlights include a three piece band and celebrity keg tapping at 8pm.
• Live Bait was closed for renovations, but with their nip/tuck finished it’s time to channel your inner King Creole and welcome them back over some $5 peel and eat shrimp with $5 drafts.
• Le Poisson Rouge is out of bounds but their “Oh! You Pretty Things:
  David Bowie + Elvis Presley Birthday Bash” this Sunday is worth the trip. Get your tickets here.

It’s now or never folks, go forth and make Elvis proud -just don’t pass out in the bathroom.

It was just back in May that we first learned that Chicago sandwich chain Potbelly would be opening a location in Rockefeller Center. And since then, they’ve continued to expand in Midtown at a feverish pace. In addition to the new location on 37th and 7th, yesterday we got word that another store will be opening in the spring. It will be located at 366 Fifth Avenue (between 34th and 35th) on the ground floor of the New York Accessories Exchange Building. There’s no signage up yet, but the security guards in the building (who seemed very excited about the new addition) said it would be taking the place of shuttered shoe store Make 10.

Most people hit up Sapporo when in need of a nice, big bowl of hot ramen. In a crowded noodle market, though, Sapporo doesn’t particularly hold up well against the competition (a fact proven again by this year’s reader poll.) Don’t count them out of your lunching rotation, though: The noodle joint also serves up several homey and delicious donburi (meal over rice) that make a trip to west 49th street very worth while.

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Every Friday we go 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.

Tappo (on 24th btwn 5th & 6th) opened just as I was leaving the Flatiron area, but with a menu full of lunch specials and combos at or under $10, my curiosity was piqued when I first stumbled across Tappo back in the fall. And once I saw Blondie’s post about their chicken parm, that settled it. I was hitting the place up the next time I made it to the neighborhood. So, when I had a lunch meeting with someone who had just recently started working nearby, I jumped at the opportunity to take a look for myself.

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• The torta cubana from Tacos y Quesdillas is not as big as I expected [Midtown Eating]
• Is the Schnitzel & Things Truck following Korilla’s lead? [Midtown Eating]
• “Disgusting Biryani Cart Experience” is an understatement [Midtown Eating]
• Searching for a good bowl of chili in Midtown East [Midtown Eating]

The inevitable happened: it got cold. When the flimsy Salumè kiosk opened last summer, I wondered what would happen to them come winter. Well, here we are, and now that we’ve had a couple days of frigid weather, they appear to be wondering the same thing, because they’ve gone missing. But let me back up a sec.

On December 24, Salumè tweeted that their kiosk was moving due to the holiday festivities. That makes sense — the other kiosks also moved around a bit, too, as they did during Thanksgiving. But, while everyone else is back in their rightful spots (actually, Snack Box has moved down the block from 47th to 46th street, FYI), Salumè is nowhere to be found…

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