Midtown Lunch

There are now two cheap eats spots on a grimy stretch of Canal St., with a branch of $1 pizza spot Roll And Go and the recent addition of Black Burger right next to each other at the corner of West Broadway. Both places were clogged with high school students and because Black Burger is little more than a counter with a couple of stools for eating, it doesn’t take much for the line to stretch out the door. Inside, you’ll find a simple menu of either single or double hamburgers or cheeseburgers (fresh, never frozen!), fries and shakes with a grilled cheese and calamari fries thrown in for good measure. And beware the warning on the wall: “Once you go Black, you never go back.”

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Yesterday, Bongo Brothers Truck celebrated a year on the road with a raffle and also unveiled its summer menu. It’s a little bit simpler than the regular menu that included a frita and you can now get any of the meats in slider form for $3.50 which is half the price of the $7 sandwiches. This menu confirms that this truck is really for the carnivores, and now we can all get ready for swimsuit season with a Cubano. They’re also conveniently parked at Old Slip & Water today.

It was almost exactly a year ago that food trucks started to get hassled on the blocks in the area of Hudson and King streets, and yesterday morning Twitter exploded with some trucks saying they had been asked to leave that area by the police. When I made it up there in between rain showers I saw Frites N Meats parked on King and a fro-yo truck parked on Hudson. Red Hook Lobster Pound Truck had been the one sounding the alarm in the morning, saying they’d been asked to leave the area. Check out what they had to say after the jump.

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If you’ve never been to Suspenders on Broadway (at Thames), or didn’t even know it existed, it’s because you have to walk down some stairs from street level, past a Subway sandwich shop and notice it before you get to an actual subway entrance. The bar and restaurant has no windows, but what it does have is a giant screen showing sports and Greek and Mediterranean food for less than $10.

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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 Cia who hadn’t ventured past Broadway or below Fulton for her lunches, and needs you help finding a spot to make her do it.

Name: Cia_b

Occupation: Web producer

Where you work: Barclay + Vesey

Age: Older than your ramp pickles

Favorite kinds of food: Peter Luger’s porterhouse, Sushiden sushi/sashimi, Sichuan Chinese food, a perfectly poached egg, pork belly anything, pickled anything.

Least favorite foods: White chicken breast

Favorite lunches downtown: Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches‘ classic bahn mi with extra sriracha (because I have no other closer choice, so I’ll take it); Chipotle (Multiple Locations) for cilantro-lime rice; smoked turkey and Brie sandwich at Blue Spoon Coffee on Chambers (btw. B’way & Church); Locanda Verde’s shaved porchetta sandwich; the raw bar at North End Grill; the lunch specials at Takahachi Bakery on Murray (at Church); the hangover sandwich at Petite Abeille (Multiple Locations); and Shake Shack on Murray (btw. West St. & N. End Ave.).

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