Midtown Lunch

The Indian restaurant Ruchi on Cedar St. (at Greenwich) would be easy to walk past without knowing it ever existed. The outside has been obscured by scaffolding for as long as I can remember, but if you work nearby you probably know the place for its 50% off lunch special which you wouldn’t even know about unless you’ve walked by and seen one of the many signs they have outside advertising the deal. The other day I was doing some online research that involved MenuPages.com and made the random discovery that Ruchi has south Indian specialties dosa and uttapam on the menu, nd they’re all $9.95!

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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 Chris who is a big fan of a certain sandwich shop and wants to find some fancy breakfast sandwiches.

Name: Chris Rojas

Occupation: Leading client relationships with investment banks for a global provider of consulting and software.  On my taxes I just put “sales.”

Where you work: Broadway & Pine

Age: 38

Favorite kinds of food: BBQ, Comida Latina, Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese

Least favorite foods: Salad, pasta that is not either homemade or expertly prepared, plain pizza.

Favorite lunches downtown: At Toasties on John St. (btw. Nassau & B’way) my all-time favorite is the smoked chicken deluxe (chicken cutlet with pastrami and smoked mozzarella).  Runners-up include: Chicken cheddar (that’s a cutlet and there’s bacon) and hot turkey #4 (freshly carved turkey, cole slaw, swiss, cranberry sauce).  The lunchbox at Diwan-E-Khaas (Multiple Locations) – the meat may vary but the veg is always dal makhani and palak paneer (spicy lentils and spinach with cheese, respectively).  If I’m famished and willing to spend more than $10 I’ll go to Ise on Pine St. (btw. William & Pearl) and impress my lunch mates with an immense bowl of katsu curry (pork, obv).

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Pane Panelle opened last September as a sandwich counter offshoot of the nicer Italian restaurant Stuzzicheria on Church St. (at Walker). Then the whole restaurant became a bit more casual and although the separate entrance for sandwiches remain, the day I went there you had to order yours at the bar so the restaurant and sandwich shop seem to have absorbed each other. The sandwiches were tasty enough, but the size-to-price ratio seemed to be skewed the wrong way and I haven’t been back since then. The other day I was in the area and the place I intended to eat at wasn’t open so instead I headed over to Pane Panelle to give them a second shot and see if the sandwiches had changed since that opening visit.

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Maybe stick with the pork chop…courtesy of Me So Hungry.

• The Taim outpost in Nolita opens soon! [Grub St.]
• Herbal soup at Excellent Pork Chop seems shady. [Me So Hungry]
• The torta at Mexico Blvd. truck is just OK. [SENY]
• The Soho Grandaisy has closed, but Tribeca’s still open. [Lunch Studio]
• Sometimes tortoise actually means pork innards. [FitR]