Menchanko Tei Gets the DOH!
Yesterday, I was very disappointed to get this email & photos
Hi there,
Menchanko on 45th at Lex – BIG FAT YELLOW NOTICE:
“Closed by order of the Board of Health”
Yikes!
I suppose it’s about time. It has been almost a year since a Midtown Lunch commenter posted this:
I don’t care what anybody says. I still love the place. Maybe I’ll just stick to the 55th St. location and their 26 (two points below passing, and no mention of vermin, as of June ’07).
Close-up of the dreaded yellow- after the jump… Read more »
Posted by Zach Brooks at 10:29 am, August 16th, 2007 under 45th btw. 3+Lex, Closed by Health Dept., Japanese.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t know who Kim is, or his Aunt, but they have a pretty awesome cart. I first wrote about this place months ago, when the 
I tried it, and remembered thinking it was good, but not as good as it could be. It turned out to be better than the actual 
In the far reaches of Midtown, there exists a magical place whose enormity, and depth of choice, is only eclipsed by its price. A wonderland of lunches, that makes 
This place I speak of is Whole Foods, and I finally got a chance to check it out last week for lunch. It rests on the Upper West Side corner of the Midtown Lunch boundries, on 8th Ave. & 59th St., Columbus Circle, in the basement of the Time Warner Center. It is easily the best “Grocery Store” in Midtown, and despite its high prices and questionable business practices, the food is undeniably fresh and of a much higher quality than any other place in our area.
I haven’t had Indian food for awhile, so I headed over to the East side of Midtown to a place I’ve walked by many times but never eaten at. Despite the sign, which mentions Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh (and the fact that the food is halal), Joy Curry & Tandoor is a normal steam table Indian food place, similar to Minar or Maharaja. The place is always packed, and frequented by a lot of Indian workers from the area, a clear sign that it must be good.
I have been very outspoken when it comes to burritos. Various posts have had me prattling on about how there are no good authentic burritos in Midtown, Chipotle sucks, Burritoville is just glorified wraps, blah blah blah. So I’m almost embarassed about what I am about to write. If push came to shove, I would never call something a burrito if it wasn’t Mexican. But that being said, the other day, while I sat in the recently opened Sugo! e Basilico, munching on my Campo Piadina Wrap, it occured to me, that what I was eating was possibly the best burrito I’ve had since I started working in Midtown. It was definitely not Mexican (it is Italian), and there was no rice and beans, or guacamole or sour cream- so technically it’s not a burrito. But it’s stuff, wrapped up in something pretty similar to a tortilla, and most importantly, it was delicious. A delicious Italian burrito. (Hey, if Taco Bell can have a “Mexican Pizza”…)
Sugo! is a fairly new, soon to be fast food chain, an Italian Chipotle if you will, but instead of Mexican burritos, they specialize in Piadina, an Italian flat bread that gets stuffed with various Mediterranean ingredients of your choosing. There is only one location right now (on 5th Ave. btw. 44+45th), but I’m guessing if this one is sucessful (and I’m pretty sure it will be), there are plenty more to come.
