Midtown Lunch

Last week, we at Midtown Lunch: Downtown got a tip that Nio’s Trinidad Roti truck was parked directly in front of Veronica’s Kitchen cart on Water between Maiden Lane & Pine. I went in search of the truck on Monday in the rain and when I didn’t see it parked in that spot, I turned around to see what the situation was at Veronica’s, only to find that the cart was MIA and Nio’s had taken their regular spot on Front St. My brain screamed “WHAT?!,” but I calmed down enough to realize that maybe Veronica’s wasn’t out that day because of the non-stop rain. So I stepped up to the window at Nio’s, feeling like I was betraying an old friend, and ordered some lunch.

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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 Thomas who works in the area of Soho that gets most of the food truck traffic, and takes full advantage of it.

Name: Thomas Whittle

Occupation: Broadcast design (on-air visuals for a certain humor-centric TV channel)

Where you work: Hudson and King

Age: 29

Favorite kinds of food: BBQ and Asian-influenced cuisine, specifically anything where weird animal parts are involved.

Least favorite foods: Anything I’ve had a thousand times before is hard to get excited about. Italian food is generally enjoyable, but I’ve had it so many ways over the years that I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d get excited about it…which has caused some tension in certain relationships I’ve had.

Favorite Lunches Downtown: Where we work, it’s all about the rise of food trucks…everyone I work with follows more than a few trucks on Twitter to figure out what is going to be for lunch on a given day. Since there haven’t traditionally been a lot of options here, we’ve taken to the recent growth of the food truck trend ravenously. Starting with the  Taiwanese fried chicken from the Bian Dang truck (which has sadly abandoned our location…what gives?!), we’ve flocked to the Schnitzel & Things truck, Red Hook Lobster Pound truck, Korilla BBQ, and more. I’m pretty excited that the Cinnamon Snail has decided to grace our neck of the woods, and am always looking for that next great mobile food option. When I’m feeling fancy, they just started offering lunch at the West Village Fatty ‘Cue, which while not exactly cheap, is most certainly delicious.

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Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who loves Goodies, located on the upper level of the shops on Fulton St. at Gold, which was why I’ve been dismayed to see the gate down every time I’ve walked by for the last couple of weeks. This Chinese restaurant was a transplant from Chinatown in some sort of reverse move that seemed to go unappreciated by the office workers in the Financial District. There’s a sign taped to the window inside the gate saying they’ll reopen soon, but that’s been there for at least two weeks. I’m keeping my fingers crossed since the food there was good, and it’s also one of the only places down here to get dim sum beyond overpriced dumplings.

The Morris Grilled Cheese Truck has been on the streets for a while, but remained outside Midtown Lunch: Downtown radar because they never really parked down here. Last week they made an appearance at the World Financial Center food truck lot and yesterday they were parked in the Financial District and there was no line as people opted for indoor lunch destinations on account of the rain. I stopped by to check out the menu, which you can see after the jump.

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There are two new restaurants in the city serving food from the Yunnan region of China, and one of them happens to be in Tribeca. Lotus Blue opened on Reade St. (at W. Broadway) to little fanfare and I initially dismissed it because there wasn’t anything on the dinner menu for $10 or less. When I looked at the lunch menu, though, I was happy to see three items within our cheap budget including a smoked tofu with rice dish and two different kinds of buns. The latter sounded the most intriguing and I think you’ll want to check these out if you work nearby.

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