PROFILE: Downtown Lunch’er “Amy”

As is customary here on Midtown Lunch, every Tuesday we’ll profile a different lunch’er and get their recommendations for places to eat in Downtown NYC. This week, we have Amy who likes Thanksgiving dinner, but wouldn’t follow it up with a Cinnabon. She needs your help finding a Mexican standby downtown.

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Name: Amy

Occupation: Accounts Manager

Where you work: Financial Square

Age: 32

Favorite Kinds of Food: Lamb shish kebab, lahmajoon (Armenian pizza), hummus, and Salad Oliveh are among my favorite Middle Eastern foods to eat.  I love Italian pasta dishes such as gnocchi with pesto and pasta Bolognese.  Although I enjoy sushi and usually order chirashi at a Japanese restaurant,  I would say my favorite Japanese dish is okonomiyaki from Otafuko on East 9th St. & 2nd Ave.  Korean barbecue and bibimbop are dishes I enjoy in K-Town.  Indian dishes such as saag paneer and chaat papri are also favorites of mine.   If I really had to do it, I think I could eat Thanksgiving dinner each night for a year straight.

Least Favorite Foods: Olives, sauerkraut, sausage made with fennel, raw tomatoes, and anything covered in cilantro.  I also do not like fast food and have a real aversion to any Cinnabon counter. Cinnabons look like big blobs of sticky calories  that would stick to me the rest of my life.  I have never tried one and never will since I learned they are also 813 calories a bun.  Gross!

Favorite Lunches Downtown: Rickshaw Dumpling Truck because the chicken and Thai basil dumplings are moist and flavorful.  Fresco on the Go on Pearl St. (at Hanover Square) for the herbed tuna sandwich on a Portuguese muffin with lemon aioli, with a side of their potato and zucchini chips. It’s good comfort food any day of the week.  Leo’s Bagels on Hanover Square (at Stone) because they have every kind of smoked salmon possible that you can order (I like the wild sockeye salmon) on an organic whole wheat everything bagel with tofu cream cheese.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: Café Hanover since it has the variety of a cafeteria and we don’t have a cafeteria in our building.  Their udon soup, pressed panini sandwiches and whole fish at the buffet are all great dishes to rely on.

Places downtown you discovered thanks to Midtown Lunch: The Qba Cuban Kitchen truck.  I would travel miles for a good Cubano sandwich and glad that I don’t have to thanks to Midtown Lunch Downtown’s posts about where the truck has been located recently.

Dream job location, purely for lunch purposes, and why: Smack in the heart of Chinatown for lunches of soup dumplings from Joe’s Shanghai on Pell St. (btw. Doyers & Bowery), steamed pork buns from Fay Da Bakery (Multiple Locations),  and dan dan noodles from Lan Zhou Handmade Noodles on Division St. (btw. Bowery & Market).   I have a sweet tooth and could eat honey sponge cake and iced Ovaltine every day.  Recently, my colleague Nina got me into iced coffee and tea mixed together from Chinatown bakeries.   It’s so good!

Anything you’d like to ask the downtown Midtown Lunch readers?: Is there anywhere downtown where my colleague Diana and I can find a really good Mexican torta?  I am seeking out tortas after I saw Rick Bayless’s Mexico: One Plate at a Time – Triple Torta-thon on PBS a few months ago.

I don’t know if they’re good or not, but the only places I know that serve tortas are all in Soho and don’t deliver to the FiDi. Tajin on Greenwich St. (btw. Edgar & Rector) has sandwiches but they’re not really tortas. Does anyone know about a hidden torta source that I’m not aware of?  And as always, if you would like to be next week’s Profiled Lunch’er (or know somebody you’d like to nominate), email us at downtownnyc@midtownlunch.com.

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