Midtown Lunch

It’s that time of year again, when we reflect on the past 365 days of stuffing our face for under $10 and vote on who we think rules the Midtown Lunch’ing scene.  Got a favorite you don’t want left out of the mix?  Think your favorite lunch spot deserves to stand above the rest?  Nominate them in the comments below.  And next week we’ll vote on the best in a number of categories, from falafel to burgers, pizza to ramen.

Related:
The Best Lunches in Midtown As Decided by You: 2011 Readers’ Poll Results

When I began writing the Midtown Happy Hour column, I was incredibly excited to add in a Buffalo wing review. Wings became the cornerstone of my happy hour experience, and I began judging a bar, in part, because of their wing prices.

But I must lament, over the past month or so, I have noticed that wing prices are climbing. Over my 20-year wing-eating career, I’ve never seen prices like these. Even earlier this year wings seemed cheap. Lately, I’m having trouble finding anything under $10. (Notable exceptions are Smith’s Bar, with 75 cent wings and Vander Bar, with a $5 happy hour wings special). I have been doing some research, and indeed I found three articles written this year about the demand for wings and how it has been driving the price of wings up. Even Buffalo Wild Wings, who has been doing great in the stock market for several years, has been losing ground and has increased the price of its wings. Atomic Wings has also increased their prices, but a representative claims “we’re still not keeping up” — in 2011, wings were $1.09 per pound, and now they’re around $2.15 a pound.

Some articles I’ve read blame the rising cost of chicken, but The National Chicken Council gives a good synopsis on wing-o-nomics, and here was a line I found helpful:

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 Photo courtesy of Gothamist

• On Monday, the Grand Central Two Boots will start serving a Reuben Pizza [Gothamist]
• Bi Lokma will rise again in Midtown East!!! [Zagat]
• Fatburger is coming to Midtown East [Grub Street]
• Dylan’s Candy Bar just got soft serve [SENY]
• Bian Dang’s replacement in Food Gallery 32 makes a decent chicken donburi [Food in Mouth]
• Mr Broadway Kosher Deli makes a good chicken shawarma [SENY]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week, our Happy Hour Correspondent posts about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap.

I’m more than pleased to report that I stumbled across a pub I’ll boldly proclaim is my current favorite happy hour in Midtown. The backstory: I’ve been reviewing happy hours in Midtown every week for about six months, and I’ve been trying to steer clear of those that have been covered by Midtown Lunch in the last year or so for variety’s sake. Thus far, I’ve really enjoyed Vander Bar, the Irish Ivy, and The Junction, but this week I found a pretty amazing bar that rivals my favorites. The bar is called Galway Pub, formerly the Galway Hooker, on 36th between Madison and 5th. Let me tell you all the reasons why.

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One of our Twitter spies snapped this photo inside Joey Pepperoni’s just yesterday. It looks as if tacos will be on the offering soon. A visit to the $1 Slice-o-Rama victor proved to yield no tacos, though – they will be starting them on Monday the 10th. We’ll bring you the reviews as soon as it’s served up in a soft tortilla for a buck or two.

Every Friday we go south of the ML boundaries in search of a delicious lunch. Sometimes it’s Murray Hill south or the Flatiron District, sometimes Gramercy and everything in between- but we just like to call it Flatiron Lunch.

I have fond memories of my first Lucky’s burger in the LES about 6 years ago. It was an unmistakably great burger, but I had so many other burger joints to try in NYC, so I wasn’t able to become a regular. And then I made the terrible mistake of having a Lucky’s milkshake (which are delicious, by the way) after eating a Gus’ spicy pickle. Curdling in your stomach is soo painful. Needless to say, I haven’t been since. But I think it was time for a revisit.

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As the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War peeled back the veneer of Socialist Paradise, an underbelly of barely functioning economics and crumbling infrastructure laid bare after years of neglect, we now see the aftermath of the Pizza Wars take its toll. When jenfjen and I reviewed Pizza King, (on 6th btw. 37+38th) we were a bit unhappy as to the results and questions of where the corners were cut to drive the slice price to 75 cents came from. The Department of Health recently shut down the erstwhile $1 slice competitor and as we would see a Kazakh nuclear facility in 1993, we now see the pizza-crusted underbelly.

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Angelo Sosa’s Midtown Asian gastropub Social Eatz will close next year to make room for his new Asian gastropub, Poppy Den NYC. Social Eatz posted the an announcement on Facebook after Grub Street broke the news. The difference between this new Asian gastropub and Poppy Den is unclear, but Grubstreet said the Poppy Den concept was something Sosa developed with a former president of Planet Hollywood, and this outpost will be the second of its kind, after the Vegas location opens in a few weeks. Read the announcement after the jump.
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Ming Du just Ming Doesn’t have luck with keeping things sanitary. Without trying to appear like I relish the closure of an independent business, doubly so one whose roast meats can’t be beat, Lunch’er Paulie reported to us that the magical inspection fairies of the DoH have again closed Ming Du for the second time this year.

Check it out after the jump…

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Lunch’er Amanda pointed out to us the other day that K-town’s cheap and wonderful stalwart Woorijip has taken out their fresh-made noodle option. Formerly at the back of the almost-always-crowded self-serve restaurant, it’s been built over and the noodle options moved.

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