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 Kino who fuels his running with a whole lot of lunching.

Name: Kino aka “Notorious P.I.G.”

Occupation: Consultant during the week, marathoner/ultramarathoner on the weekend.

Where you work: Broadway & Wall

Age: Dirty 30 + 2

Favorite kinds of food: Anything ethnic & adventurous.

Least favorite foods: Japanese natto (fermented beans) and factory farm fast food.

Favorite lunches downtown: Ise Japanese Restaurant on Pine (btw. William & Pearl) for its secret pre-noon specials (menu is in Japanese, which I can decipher); Zaitzeff on Nassau (at John) for their 1/2 pound Kobe beef burger, medium rare, with an add-on of white cheddar cheese, grilled mushrooms, & grilled jalapeno; Potbelly’s Italian on whole wheat plus meatball, double meat.  I’m a sucker for Nicky’s Vietnamese Sandwiches‘ pork banh mi. Also, Shake Shack on Murray (btw. West & N. End Ave.), Luke’s Lobster on S. William (at Broad), Crisp on Fulton St. (btw. Dutch & William), and Bon Chon on John (btw. Cliff & Pearl). Hopefully their upcoming KorTako place doesn’t disappoint.

The “go-to” lunch place you and your co-workers eat at too often: All of the above.

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If you know anyone who’s eaten at a Potbelly Sandwich Shop in the Midwest or anywhere outside of New York City, they’ve probably told you about the “underground” menu with different combos of sandwiches than is on the regular menu. A tweet from Potbelly about one of these new underground sandwiches led me to call the Maiden Lane location to confirm that they actually will do this menu tweaking and I was confidently assured by the man who answered the phone that they absolutely sold these items. So I rounded up a friend and headed over to wait in the always-insane line, excited to order one of the five underground sandwiches that I found after some careful research online. Click through for the outcome of this experiment.

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This is a taco in the hands of the Japanese. Courtesy of Serious Eats NY.

• Chinatown’s Sau Voi offers a sweet sandwich. [Eating In Translation]
• Apparently Grandaisy has a really good egg sandwich. [Fork in the Road]
• The old Blarney Stone on Fulton is now a gastro-pub. [EV Grieve]
• Shacktoberfest starts today at Shake Shack. [Grub St.]
• Japanese-Mexican food involves a lot of cream cheese. [Serious Eats NY]