Midtown Lunch

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 Grace who is into comfort foods from a variety of countries and thinks there should be a nickname for a certain stretch of Maiden Lane.

Name: Grace C.

Occupation: Digital marketing for government agency

Where you work: William St., between Fulton & John

Age: 29

Favorite kinds of food: If I ranked the world’s cuisines: Italian – pasta carbonara, New York pizza, chicken marsala with mashed potatoes and broccoli; Japanese – RAMEN, sushi, scallop sashimi, curry, gyoza; Chinese – dim sum, Cantonese-style lobster, emperor’s tofu, walnut shrimp, whole steamed fish, white rice alone, snow pea leaves, crunchy pig ears, xiao long bao; Thai – Isaan-style barbecue chicken, tom kha gai, som tum; French – escargot; American – grilled cheese, waffles… basically, all my comfort foods.

Least favorite foods: Bottom-feeders such as sea slugs and sea urchins. I also can’t bring myself to bite into an intact octopus head.

Favorite lunches downtown: Fried zucchini vegetarian pita at Pita Press on Cedar (btw. William & Pearl) with Greek herbal tea; pork dumplings with Chinese spaghetti $6 lunch special at A-Pou’s Taste Cart on Liberty St. (nr. Broadway), with corn soup if I’m in the mood; the classic at Baoguette on Maiden Lane (btw. Broadway & Nassau); pizza sandwich at Potbelly on Maiden Lane (at Gold) with a real strawberry shake; bento box at Ise on Pine (btw. Pearl & William) for special occasions; pad see eew with chicken at Bennie’s Thai on Fulton St. (at Gold); kosher falafel at Pita Express on Ann St. (btw. Park Row & Nassau); and Blue Spoon on Chambers St. (btw. Broadway & Church) for pressed sandwiches. In the summertime, I’ll stop for $3 fruit juices from the guy in front of Zeytuna. And salads and small turkey chili with cheddar cheese from Patuca, which are sadly now gone.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: Soma by Nature — the fast food Korean place on William (btw. Fulton & John), Subway, Chipotle for burrito bowls, Chop’t’s $$$ salads, and of course, Yip’s Chinese buffet.

Places downtown you discovered thanks to Midtown Lunch: Downtown?: Definitely the dumpling cart [A-Pou’s] at Liberty Plaza! The best find. Go when it’s raining to guarantee no line.

Dream job location, purely for lunch purposes, and why: Sichuan province, China, for kung pao chicken that’s out of this world!

Anything you’d like to ask the Midtown Lunch: Downtown readers?: What should we nickname the food mecca that is Maiden Lane between Gold and Pearl? In my head, I call it “Silicon Alley,” knowing fully that refers to something else entirely.

I always call that stretch “chain row” for reasons pretty straightforward reasons. What nickname ideas do you all have? 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 downtown@midtownlunch.com.