Midtown Lunch

On Saturday we gathered together at City Winery with a couple hundred of our closest friends to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of Midtown Lunch (yes, we too are surprised this thing has been around for 5 years!)   A great time was had by all thanks to the amazing food (provided graciously by Kwik Meal, The Biryani Cart, Cer Te, Ma Peche, Food Gallery 32, El Rey del Sabor, Tri Tip Grill, Wafels & Dinges, Miss Softee & the Rolling Cones, Kelvin Slush, and Momofuku Milk Bar) and the endless drinks courtesy of Brooklyn Brewery and GuS’s soda.

Check out the highlights, after the jump…

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I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I’m one of the last ML contributors to check out Food Gallery 32. The early reports looked good, but nothing really motivated me to schlep to 32nd street until until I read the Serious Eats review of Crêpe Monster’s Milk Toaster which they called “gloriously excessive and delicious.” Mmm, “gloriously excessive” sounds like my type of dessert! Read more »

Kimbap is an ideal lunch item for me. It’s cheap, travels well, packs an even and flavorful dose of carbs, proteins, veggies, and it doesn’t suffer if I get pulled into a meeting and it sits on my desk for hours until I finally get to it.

Whenever I get the hankering for kimbap and I’m close to Koreatown, E-Mo (‘Aunt’ in Korean) has always been my go to. I get sentimental when it comes to this place as well – it’s a tiny hole-in-the-wall that’s been around forever, and the old Korean lady that assembles the kimbap to-order is as sweet as can be (at least when she’s not scolding me for my embarrassing lack of conversational Korean). It may not be the best kimbap I’ve ever had, but compared to the other options in K-town, it always held its own. That is until Food Gallery 32 opened up across the street, and started selling its own version of made-to-order kimbap at the Boon Sik Zip stall.

A comparison between the two was inevitable, so we set off to do a head-to-head assessment in our highly unscientific analysis.

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If yesterday’s post about the Serious Eats review of Food Gallery 32 got you thinking about stopping in for dinner or an after work snack tonight, you might want to hold off. This afternoon, around 3pm, a sprinkler burst over O-De-Ppang! in booth 3 of the Koreatown food court. The FDNY was on sight in minutes to get things worked out. Don’t panic though, word is they should be up and running again in the next couple of hours.

Photo courtesy of Robyn Lee/Serious Eats

We’ve been tirelessly tracking the progress of Food Gallery 32 since the end of last year, from the original opening in December through the decision to scrap their much maligned ordering system.  Clay tried the jjajangmyeon from Jin Jja Roo, the shrimp tempura udon from Big Bowl Noodle, the won ton soup from Bian Dang, and the pork cutlets from Pastel, and Chris H. tried the Red Mango, the general tsos chicken from Bian Dang, and Crepe Monster on the 3rd floor.   Not enough for you?  Well today Serious Eats: New York busted out with their official review including an incredibly handy guide to all the stalls complete with menus.

If you’ve followed our coverage of Food Gallery 32, it’s been a story of trial and error, but for the most part, a successful one. Bian Dang’s 3rd floor off-shoot, Crêpe Monster, has followed a similar trajectory of small oversights, but this story ends on a happy note as well. You may recall Crêpe Monster’s preview, which was plagued by long lines and a shapeless menu, but I paid them a visit recently, and was quite pleased with what I saw and tasted.
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The writers of Midtown Lunch (spurred on by Zach, no doubt) all seem to have a rapt fascination and begrudging respect for General Tso’s chicken – the faux-Chinese dish of deep fried lumps of breaded chicken, slathered in an unidentifiable glaze. Food snobs may dismiss this humble dish, but for the sentimental type, this dish is strongly evocative of simpler times – perhaps your childhood mall food court or the take-out dive that you’d frequent as a broke college student. And when we heard that Bian Dang in the Food Gallery 32 would be carrying this dish, it was a done deal.

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It took them well over a month, but Food Gallery 32 has finally scrapped their much maligned ordering system.  The single ordering counter for all the different stations was easily the biggest complaint people had about the food court, and clearly they heard the chatter.  The upside is you no longer have to walk back and forth between the different stations and the ordering counter trying to remember what you wanted to order from the various menus.  The downside?  Now all the food court places will have to hire their own cashiers to take orders (hopefully they won’t raise prices!), and you’ll have to go to a separate cashier to order drinks from the station next to Red Mango.

Related:
Food Gallery 32 Has the Internet Buzzing

Good news for Red Mango fans! The K-town outpost located inside Food Gallery 32 is now open for business. However, this Red Mango represents a complete shift from the traditional fro-yo format and pricing program, going the DIY/pay what it weighs route instead. Customers choose a cup size and pull their own fro-yo from an impressive line-up of flavors. They’ve kept their original formula on hand, but have added pomegranate, dulce de leche, black cherry, vanilla, melon, lemon, and pineapple flavors, and hinted at additional varieties coming soon.

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Are You Have Trouble Understanding How This Works?

Judging by all the heated exchanges in the comments section of last week’s visit to Food Gallery 32, it should come as no surprise that the rest of the food folks around the internet are chattering about Koreatown’s food court as well. On Monday, Eater posted a Good News/Bad News roundup of the reviews so far. Predictably, no one is particularly fond of the ordering system. More importantly, they had some comments on the food. Kitchenette of In a Nutshell somehow wasn’t so into Bian Dang’s pork chop; Dave from Eating in Translation backs me up on not liking the jja jang myon at Jin Jja Roo and wishes the jjam ppong was spicier. Fork in the Road reminds us that we’re talking about a simple food court, so our expectations ought to be a little lower while trying out Hamnok’s seafood pancake (a little doughy and mostly octopus, but well flavored) and bi bim bap (would be better from a stone bowl) along with a hot bowl of haemul kal-guksu from Big Bowl (slightly overcooked noodles, but a good broth).

With only a couple weeks under their belts, I’d again suggest we allow them some time to settle in. If the difference between week one and week two alone is anything to go by, I think they’ll be in good shape by the end of the winter.