Midtown Lunch

When last we visited Roti Mediterranean Grill on Pearl St. (at Cedar), it was a soft opening, the food was free, the lines were long and I was undecided as to whether I liked this place or not. That was back in May, and since then, every time I’ve walked by there’s been a line out the door (or they’ve been closed. That’s seemed to happen a lot too), and that’s a lot to say with so many lunch options on the same block.

So, I decided to actually purchase some food this time and see if it was better than what I got when they were doing staff training. My thoughts on healthified street cart fare straight ahead.

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Best subway snack ever. Via Fork in the Road.

• New juice bar-type place coming from Nish Nush owners. [Tribeca Citizen]
• So many Italian combos, so little stomach space. [SENY]
• A celebrity’s wife is opening a Tribeca cafe. [Grub St.]
• The story behind the subway churro sellers. [FitR]

It’s summer and when it’s hot outside sometimes a room temperature lobster roll sounds like the only thing good to eat, besides ice cream. The problem is if you go to the Red Hook Lobster Truck, Luke’s Lobster or any other place that serves seafood stuffed into toasted hot dog buns, you’re going to pay $15 or more for the privilege.

But! As we’ve discovered at Luke’s, sometimes the other seafood rolls are both cheaper and tastier (or as tasty) as the lobster variety. With this in mind, I hit up Red Hook Lobster’s kiosk at the South St. Seaport’s Smorgasburg pop up and sampled their shrimp roll. I was not disappointed.  Read more »

Normally we don’t cover openings of chain convenience stores but the first 7-11 is about to open its doors and I think we can all agree that a Slurpee sounds so good right now. The store is at John St. & Pearl, and it looks pretty nice from the outside. It also looks as though they have more food to offer than hot dogs endlessly spinning around and taquitos.

Sometimes all you want for lunch is some protein, vegetables and rice. You could go for street meat or falafel, or a cheap Chinese special, but Thai is also at the top of my list when that feeling hits. And amazingly, we’ve never reviewed one of the cheaper sources of a Thai food lunch in the Financial District – Cafe Sage on John St. (at Cliff).

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There’s a program this summer called Water St. Pops which involves a bunch of entertainment options, as well as cooking demonstrations and, what we all care about, free food.

On Friday you can get free Ben & Jerry’s frozen yogurt from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 1 New York Plaza (South & Whitehall streets). They’re also doing a sampling at 200 Water St. from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday. Other events include lunch markets with Stone St. Tavern and Route 66 Smokehouse from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at the Elevated Acre at 55 Water St. and again on Thursday at the same time and place.