Midtown Lunch

Our friends over at NYMag’s Grub Street recently unveiled a massive line-up of up-and-coming restaurant openings. While we’re looking forward to some exciting expansions and new additions to the NY food scene, we couldn’t help but be a little disappointed over the lack of new midtown restaurants. In fact, the only real Midtown Lunch worthy newcomer seems to be an outpost of South Korean dumpling chain, Daheen Wang Mandoo, which will serve their awesome and cheap steamed dumplings in K-town (32nd St & 5th Ave).

Other potential midtown lunch spots include a “retro soda shop” concept called The Skylight Shoppe at 50th & Madison, which will serve an oysters Rockefeller po’boy. Additionally, Laurent Tourondel, formerly of the BLT group, will be opening an upscale burger joint at 40th & 5th, and will be serving his signature burgers, kobe hot dogs, and boozy milkshakes. In brighter news, it looks like the new Midtown Ippudo is finally set to open in December.

I guess there are very few trendy restaurants in Midtown because it seems like all the new hot spots around the city that are vaguely under $25 made NYMag’s cut on their annual Cheap Eats issue and barely any are in Midtown. It should really be called Cheap(ish) Eats (That Opened Within the Last Year or Two and Are Already Hugely Popular).  Sure, we got the inclusion of Don Antonio’s $23 (!) racchetta pizza, an interview with Danji chef Hooni Kim, a mention of the steamed buns on Oceana’s bar menu and Ma Peche’s lobster bun, but the only place we get real true cheap love (I’m talking the under $10 type) is with the $.75 cent slice from 2 Bros. Pizza, a pretzel from a cart on 43rd and Sixth, and street meat from La Baguette Café truck in the section where Adam Platt rates dirt cheap food. This is what we do all year long, thank you very much!

Check out the entire Eat Cheap issue over on New York Magazine’s website>>

We got pretty drooly (is that a word?) yesterday flipping through New York Mag’s “35 Best Pork Dishes in NYC” , but sadly none of them are Midtown Lunches- unless your idea of a Midtown Lunch is splitting the $68 pork chop for two at Ma Peche. (We wish that was our life.) Anyway, it’s still worth taking a look at the pretty excellent list, and then afterwards you can settle for some roast pig over rice from Hing Won, or the crispy pork skin at Cafe Cello as a consolation prize.

Ultraclay wasn’t the only ML contributor in print yesterday… This week’s New York Magazine has a guide to food delivery and two of our peoples were included in the issue.  Our Downtown guru Andrea gave her delivery recs for Crown Heights, and Amy covered 2nd Ave. in Midtown East (apparently the chow fun at Mee Noodle is great.)  Other Midtown tidbits of note?  Danyelle Freeman, aka Restaurant Girl, likes Wondee Siam, the roast pork at Tina’s Cuban, and the tempura udon at Ise (on 56th btw 5+6th Ave.)    Check out the entire list of delivery recs by neighborhood here, and let us know what your favorite Midtown delivery option is in the comments…

There’s an interesting article in this week’s New York Mag about how fancy pants restauranteurs have given up on opening 3 star restaurants in favor of burger joints. Shake Shack and Bill’s Bar & Burger are mentioned (natch), and Stephen Hanson had interesting theory: “Burger places, unlike any other food concept, can exist on every corner, and they will all do well… This isn’t true of Mexican restaurants or pizza places.” Oh yeah? Tell that to these guys!