Midtown Lunch

Huzzah for horizontal integration! To promote the launch of their new food website, NBC brought on 4 famous chefs to take to the streets in food carts yesterday. So naturally the chefs appeared on the Today Show, and the NBC local news had first dibs on interviews for the nightly newscast. In addition to interviewing the chefs, they also talked to people on the street, and Lunch’er “Jill” (who sent us the first report about the fish and chips) made the cut! She’s the one in the in the serious winter cap talking about “lifting the bar”… a far more positive report than what she sent us… but in her defense it was before she ate. “I had no idea what I was saying. I was so hungry I was light headed.” Nice. Check out the video after the jump…

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The first reports are pouring in from NBC’s fancy food truck promotion today. You had to win your way in… and it looks like a lot of Midtown Lunchers took advantage. Blondie and Brownie are on line right now at the Boulud Truck in Midtown (on 48th btw. 5+6th) and they will be sending live reports from the scene (apparently he is serving burgers!), but to tie you over here’s a report sent in by Lunch’er Jill from the Liebrandt truck, which was parked from 10-Noon in the Flatiron District.

Due to my strange talent for being able to tell the location of pictures taken around NYC, we landed a spot on the fancy food truck express today. An email told us to go down to the Flat Iron district, where Paul Liebrandt was going to be serving fish and chips. Yum! I was excited! Exclusivity in New York is a very heady thing, and I was all excited that we didn’t get one of those obnoxious ACCESS DENIED emails. But, honestly, leaving work for lunch at 10:30 and spending $4.50 for the trip made me hope that the food was going to be worth it. ACCESS GRANTED read the little card we were handed at the start of the line. Then they checked our name, our password, and stamped our hand. First of all, it seemed like there were many more NBC staff standing around the cart then there were lucky winners. We grabbed a little cone of food and barely walked four steps before we were stopped by a camera crew and interviewed about the experience. Everyone, the chef, the staff, the camera crew, could not have been nicer. But we were served one tiny fish croquette type thing and a few chips. A magnificent, delectable fish and chips combination, but it was practically a thimbleful. The fact that they called this a lunch was very misleading.

Check out the cone, plus live reports from Midtown, after the jump…

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The spots have been announced for today’s NBC branded fancy food truck featuring chefs Daniel Boulud, Paul Liebrandt, Alain Ducasse, and Michael White... and prime time has gone to Midtown.  From Noon to 2pm the truck will be parked on 48th & 5th, with Daniel Boulud supposedly serving his Pork Belly topped “Frenchie” burger (although we are hearing that there might be a last minute switch happening to the far less jealousy inducing croque monsieur.)  You had to win your way in, but there’s nothing that says you can’t lurk in a scary enough way to get served.  [Photo courtesy of jmoranmoya]

Remember last April when NBCNewYork put David Chang into a street cart downtown to promote their new website? Well, they’re at it again.  We’re hearing from a very good source that on Feburary 8th Daniel Boulud “and friends” will be hijacking a food truck to promote the launch of NBC’s new restaurant site. “It’ll be a bonafide truck, stopping at various unannounced locations through out the city.” And unlike the Chang thing, they are guaranteeing a Midtown stop. (My vote is for charcuterie sandwiches!)