Midtown Lunch

As far as I know, fancy falafel chain Crisp hasn’t debuted a new sandwich in a while after throwing Asian and Mexican-hybrid sandwiches along with falafel burgers our way. The Crisp on Wheels truck has been talking about a new creation called the Casablanca on Twitter recently and since the truck only comes downtown one day a week it wasn’t likely I’d get to try it. Lo and behold, a look at the menu for the Fulton St. location shows it’s offered there too. If you like eggplant, this thing gives it to you in two forms.

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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 Patricia who lunches in the Financial District but would rather be in the East Village.

Name: Patricia Tirona

Occupation: Corporate gift sales

Where you work: Wall St. between William and Gold

Age: 38

Favorite kinds of food: Nothing beats Japanese  food for me – sushi, sashimi, udon, soba, yakitori – biggest variety within one cuisine by far.  2nd favorite is Thai – shrimp dumplings, drunken noodles, any dish with Thai basil.  Vietnamese – pho, classic sandwiches, grilled pork on vermicelli, mint/lettuce-wrapped spring rolls.  Love Mexican food – stewed beef tacos, enchiladas, tamales, anything with cheese and anything spicy.  Tapas is great for the variety and the smaller portions which means I can try several dishes every time I go.

Least favorite foods: Despite being Filipino, I rarely if ever eat it or get cravings for it.  For the most part I find it too heavy and am not a fan of the spices.  I can’t stand coleslaw, chicken salad, or anything with excessive mayo.

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If you work in the desolate part of Tribeca on or near Broadway (or around City Hall), you may be happy to hear that you’ll have another lunch option in the near future. Lunch’er Danielle sent in a tip that Chipotle has a store coming soon to 281 Broadway btw. Chambers and Reade, in the bottom part of the above building that’s under construction and covered in scaffolding. According to Chipotle’s Web site, it will be open until 10 p.m. so it’s another option if you don’t want to eat at Checkers around the corner.

We now have three carts serving food from the Caribbean in the Financial District and until last week I’d eaten at two of them. The Trinidad & Tobago cart down on Whitehall St. served me a delicious roti and I really liked the food from R. Retha’s cart (aka the Jamaican Dutchy) on S. William. The cart I’d never tried was Veronica’s Kitchen on Front St. (at Pine) and I’m not quite sure why. There’s normally a long, imposing line for what Veronica’s cooking, but because it was a rainy and windy day and the area was deserted prior to Thanksgiving, there was one person in front of me when I stopped by last week. While there was jerk chicken on offer, it’s already been Downtown Lunch approved, so I went with another standby – brown stew chicken.

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