Midtown Lunch

It’s a familiar story at this point: Another year, another Choice Eats that sadly neglects the restaurants of midtown. This was my first year attending and I was honestly surprised at how few Midtown offerings there were. In past years, Margon flew the flag for the underrepresented, but this year, the only restaurant to fall within Midtown Lunch boundaries was Toloache, with just out of bounds Xie Xie and Mantou Chinese Sandwiches rounding out the Midtown selections.

It was disappointing from a Midtown Lunch’ing standpoint, but there was plenty of other deliciousness to stuff my face with. After the jump, some of my favorites.

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So it appears as if the real big problems at Toloache’s $1 taco celebration were mostly contained to the first hour.  Once they got rolling in the kitchen, things seemed to settle down a bit.  There was a line, but my to go order came out in less than 10 minutes and there were many reports of people getting more tacos than they ordered.  Case in point: me.  As you can see from the photo above, my tacos didn’t quite make it back to the office in perfect condition, but damn were they tasty.  Small, but tasty- and well worth the $1 price tag. Downing 7 for lunch was no problem.  I paid for 9, and ended up getting 11.  Score for me. Oh, and brisket was replaced by pork on the menu. Double score.

Unfortunately the early excitement of the Midtown Lunch community has ruined it for the rest of the day, and according to the restaurant they will no longer be doing $1 taco take out orders today.  (Naturally, you are free to order from the regular menu though.) You are more than welcome to come and eat $1 tacos in the restaurant, but you cannot take them to go. The promotion goes on until 11pm, and they do take reservations, so I would recommend calling ahead (212-581-1818).  Of course the way things are going today, maybe they’ll change their mind again… who the hell knows.  For once it would be nice for a restaurant to have a plan. $1 Tacos + Midtown Lunch’ers = (in the words of Eater) “a bit of a shitshow”.  Good luck to the after work crowd…