Midtown Lunch

When I mentioned that L&L Hawaiian BBQ on Fulton St. (at Gold) had started serving Chinese food from a steam table, luncher rodalpho commented on his favorite item from the establishment:

I haven’t tried the buffet because I generally don’t leave my office for lunch, but I have sampled most of L&L’s menu. Skip the plate lunches, the sushi, and the Chinese food. L&L has one (and only one) truly great item on its menu– the BBQ beef sandwich. I strongly recommend it.

That sounded like a strong enough endorsement for me to go get myself a beef sandwich.

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I will admit that despite working downtown for more than two years, I have never eaten at L&L Hawaiian BBQ on Fulton St. (btw. Gold & Cliff). I’m not quite sure why, but I feel that deep in my mind I knew that eating lunch here would make me worthless for the rest of the afternoon at work. When Daniel checked it out last year he called it the “Hawaiian McDonald’s” and while he liked the roast duck and spare ribs all right, he wanted to go back to check out the curry chicken katsu. That sounded good to me, so I headed over with an empty stomach and dreams of Japanese-style fried meat in my head. Find out if the katsu was worth the food coma after the jump. Read more »

Midtown workers shouldn’t have all the fun, so to even the score, I’ve brought on Daniel Krieger as an official Downtown Lunch Correspondent to write up some of the tasty stuff you can get in the lower half of Manhattan. He’s a great photographer (insuring good food porn), but more importantly he is a lover of cheap, unique and delicious eats (or as I like to call it- Midtown Lunch’ish food.) This week he hits up L&L Barbecue, which Kathy YL Chan (our resident expert on all things Hawaii) calls the Hawaiian McDonald’s.

I hope I didn’t make a mistake by not ordering anything with the word “Hawaiian” in the title on my visit to L&L Barbecue. Then again, I didn’t see anyone eating any of those menu items so I felt pretty confident going with the strategy of ordering what everyone else was eating.

I overheard a customer saying how good the curry chicken katsu is, so I was tempted to go with that- but in the end became mesmerized by the BBQ roasted meats at a different table (probably for bit too long, since the guy put his arm over his plate and gave me a look.)

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