Midtown Lunch

With all the talk over Patsy’s (Patty’s?) Taco Truck making a two day appearance in Midtown, it’s not surprising that the two mainstay Midtown taco trucks have been mentioned a bit in the past week. There is the sombrero topped taco truck on 50th btw. 6+7th, and the previously sombrero-less Tacos/Burritos cart on 54th and Madison. I say “previously” because it appears as if this cart has come down with a case of sombrero envy… Read more »

I did a bad bad thing last week.  After reading about Chop’t in the New York Post, I was compelled to go and check out their Po’boy Salad.  Anybody who reads this blog with any frequency knows I have a special place in my heart for New Orleans- and even a generic salad chain like Chop’t can get me to pay attention to them by making something called a Po’boy Salad.  What does that even mean?  And quite frankly, how could I not? 

Walking into Chop’t was a particularly terrifying experience.  As described in the Post article, the place is packed, and very intimidating (the menu is very long and if you don’t know exactly what you want you’ll hold everything up), and while I find salad places to be scary enough on their own- imagine how much scarier it becomes when you put giant machetes in the hands of the people making these salads.  It’s much harder to look at people with derision in your eyes when they’re holding giant salad cutting knives.

Despite being excited mildly interested, I should have known something was wrong immediately when I spotted the ingredient list of the Po’boy Salad.  Fried chicken (that’s good), lettuce (sure), tomato (makes sense), and cheese (???).  Cheese?  I don’t seem to remember cheese on any Po’boy I’ve ever had.  I do remember pickles.  But there are no pickles on this salad.  I don’t know what I was expecting, and I probably would have just turned and walked out right then, if I hadn’t spotted spotted something that actually stirred a bit of genuine excitement inside me.  Something so grotesque (in a good way) that it could actually have a chance of redeeming this monstrosity of a lunch establishment.   Read more »

One of my favorite (in theory) lunch places, that I don’t get to nearly enough, is the Lunch Box Buffet on 34th St. btw. 7+8th.  It’s been mentioned a few times in the comments, and I just never have gotten around to writing about it.  A fairly simple concept, it combines two of my favorite things- value and cheap chinese food.  5 items for $5.  How does it get any better than that?  Well, I’ll tell you how:  they’ve added a Fay Da Bakery to the front of the location.

Lunch Box Buffet isn’t necessarily the best cheap chinese food in the area, but it has got the largest selection, the best pricing concept (especially for variety), and it’s much less intimidating than the far more adventurous Ying Du (on 38th btw. 7+8th.)  All the food is labeled, and the’ve got plenty of non-chinese items, like the very popular fried chicken.  Now with the addition of Fay Da it becomes much easier to ignore the cheapness of the Chinese food… you can always follow it up with a delicious custard bun.   Read more »

At the peak of the heat last week I reported that Pro Hot Korean (on 56th btw. 5+6th) was now serving naengmyeon, a cold summertime Korean noodle soup- welcome news for anybody who works in the northern part of Midtown and can’t trek to Koreatown for some refreshing cold noodles.  It turns out the version they serve is Bi Bim Naengmyeon, which isn’t a soup at all (like the Japanese hiyashi chuka) but a cold noodle salad mixed with red chile paste, zucchini and apples or asian pear.  Oftentimes it will come with a cold broth on the side and Pro Hot Korean gives you a cup of their “miso” soup, but it was hot so I’m guessing you’re not actually supposed to pour it over the noodles (unless maybe the hot broth gets cooled down by the cold noodles?  I’ll admit, I don’t really know.)

As with anything pre-packaged, and the PHK version of naengmyeon is made in advance, it wasn’t the best thing I had ever had- but it certainly was refreshing and fairly tasty.  They were also serving a kimchee dangmyeon, which is pretty much the same thing (at Pro Hot Korean anyway), but instead of the buckwheat noodles they use the standard Korean glass noodles.  For $2 less ($6.95 instead of $8.95) I think next time I may try the dangmyeon.  Despite using a different noodle, they both looked practically the same from the outside (although the naengmyeon comes with half of a hard boiled egg.)

The best deal is after the jump.   Read more »

Got a frantic email yesterday from a lunch’er lookin to confirm the news that Lost City reported about the Hallo Berlin Cart:

I heard the head vendor talk about how all the world wanted him and his food and he wouldn’t be at the corner forever. I didn’t completely get the gist of his meaning, but the general idea is that the cart was wanted elsewhere across the globe and he was going on a world tour. He would sell sausage in Beijing for the coming Olympics. From there he would go to Rio de Janiero for a spell. The upshot was we would be without the cart for a number of months, but he would eventually return.

It turns out the cart will indeed be gone for at least the first two weeks in July (and probably the second two weeks) as the two Babiel brothers make their annual trip home to Germany.  It’s hard to tell when they’re joking and when they’re being serious, but they also told me they’d be attending a sausage and beer convention.  Either way, the cart will be gone starting on June 30th, and will return the first week in August at the latest. 

As for the Olympics, which begin on August 8th, Rolf confirmed that they have been invited to Beijing to sling sausages- but there will be a replacement cart on 54th & 5th, so there won’t be any further interruption in service.  In the meantime you’ve got a little less than two weeks to load up at the cart, and then we’ll all have to make the trip over to the 9th Ave. Hallo Berlin Express (btw. 50+51st).

When Olympic Pita first came to Midtown in February of last year, I was pretty excited.  The Brooklyn location was pretty well known, and has a lot of fans (plus has been mentioned by at least 4 Profiled Midtown Lunch’ers)- but I couldn’t help but be put off by a few things.  First, the back is a sit down restaurant with most items on the menu costing over $10 (a Midtown Lunch no-no).  They had a take out counter in the front, where you could watch them bake beautiful looking fresh laffa bread, but all of those sandwiches (with the exception of the falafel) were over $10.  You could buy a cheaper sandwich on pita, but why would you want to eat something stuffed in pre-packaged pita, while there’s amazing looking laffa staring you in the face.

At the time, Kosher Deluxe’s shawarma on pita was (barely) under $10, so I was of the opinion that I didn’t need Olympic Pita.  Plus if they were going to charge that much for a sandwich, there were cheaper places to get good falafel and shawarma sandwiches, like Pick a Pita on 38th btw. 7+8th (and they’ll even put fries in your sandwich!)  Since then, Kosher Deluxe has raised their prices (a shawarma on laffa sandwich is now over $10) and so I finally caved in and tried the Olympic Pita falafel on laffa ($6.50), the only item on the menu worthy of a Midtown Lunch distinction… and all I can say is- wow.  What the hell took me so long! ?!  Read more »