Midtown Lunch

While walking past the row of lunch spots between Pearl & S. William streets, I noticed that Pizza Pizza had changed its name to Justino’s Pizzeria. A search online shows that it’s a third location of an NYC mini-chain that’s also on Staten Island and Midtown. The menu looks pretty standard, although they do offer clam pizza and an “L and B style Sicilian” which I’m guessing is an homage to L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn.

Is it good or bad when you swear out loud due to the size of the lunch served to you? This was the question I asked myself after unwrapping my sandwich from the Fried Chicken & More cart.

I’d first tried the cart’s namesake fried chicken after they started serving food at Park Place & W. Broadway in January. The chicken was reasonably good, and most of all, dirt cheap. Since that first taste, the cart has expanded its offerings by leaps and bounds with several kinds of fried chicken products (nuggets, popcorn, wings) on the menu alongside cheeseburgers, a fish sandwich, falafel, pizza rolls, biscuits and fries. Unless you only order a single piece of chicken, you are not likely to go away hungry here.

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The large retail space at the bottom of the distinctive yellow William Beaver House condo building at William & Beaver revealed itself to be Open Kitchen a few weeks back. A fellow Lunch’er who works nearby reporter late Friday that the place was open for business. A commenter on the original post, who no doubt is in on the project, says it will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The “gourmet marketplace” will have prepared foods, said the commenter, along with a hot/cold buffet and an “international selection of foods prepared to order.” From the look of the place, it will be a step above a generic deli, but be prepared for a review soon.

Arepas: Venezuala’s tacos. Via SENY.

• A plea for someone to open a good eatery in an old deli space. [Tribeca Citizen]
• Shakshuka in sandwich form for the win! [Eating in Translation]
• A peek at coming Aussie coffee spot Bluestone Lane. [DNAinfo]
• Cronut mania has reached a new low. [Gothamist]
• There’s a new source of arepas downtown. [SENY]

Way back in the day – more than three years ago – my predecessor Kevin attempted to try Underground Pizza‘s jalapeno bacon slice, but got denied. While he did sample a worthy vodka slice, I had made a mental note to try this slice if I had a chance. That opportunity happened late last week, and I was sad I waited this long to try it.  Read more »

The collection of carts along the water outside the World Financial Center has been a mixed bag since they launched a couple of years ago with burgers, lobster rolls and tacos among the foods on offer. The choices have changed, as the food scene at the WFC has.

Now that the indoor food court is closed for renovations, the carts and food trucks that park outside daily have picked up the slack. I was surprised to see a crop of mostly new vendors among the carts alongside mainstay Quality Burger, among them hot dogs, tacos and rotisserie chicken. Check out my experiment with mixing a Moroccan sausage with Vietnamese sandwich toppings straight ahead!  Read more »