Midtown Lunch

The confluence of tourist chow and the oft-spawning generic steam table deli comes to a crashing head on 34th St., especially this block right across from Penn Station. Make no mistake, it is a struggle for the good stuff to shine in this space, and the area has seen no real new changes for the positive lately. Still, Lunch Box Buffet has seen itself noted often by Midtown Lunch for having a Fay Da Bakery outpost, selling Chinese steamed and baked buns and cakes/pastries, and later for bringing forth a chef from Flushing to make good stuff happen with the noodle soup front. While the Fay Da supplied baked and steamed fare was ousted to be replaced by house-made Chinese bakery goods, the noodle soups remain. It behooves a look at both, especially on a humid, splatteringly rainy day.

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Our friends over at NYMag’s Grub Street recently unveiled a massive line-up of up-and-coming restaurant openings. While we’re looking forward to some exciting expansions and new additions to the NY food scene, we couldn’t help but be a little disappointed over the lack of new midtown restaurants. In fact, the only real Midtown Lunch worthy newcomer seems to be an outpost of South Korean dumpling chain, Daheen Wang Mandoo, which will serve their awesome and cheap steamed dumplings in K-town (32nd St & 5th Ave).

Other potential midtown lunch spots include a “retro soda shop” concept called The Skylight Shoppe at 50th & Madison, which will serve an oysters Rockefeller po’boy. Additionally, Laurent Tourondel, formerly of the BLT group, will be opening an upscale burger joint at 40th & 5th, and will be serving his signature burgers, kobe hot dogs, and boozy milkshakes. In brighter news, it looks like the new Midtown Ippudo is finally set to open in December.

Well folks, I’m going to try to make Monday Meatless. Why? I love animals… but don’t get me wrong. I really love to eat ‘em. So much, in fact, that for years I almost never had a meal without meat. I now enjoy going meatless for a day each week just to make sure I’ve got variety in my diet. I realized since moving to New York in 2009 that there are some great vegan and vegetarian dishes out there that I could be missing out on. Why limit myself? And I thought, why not Meatless Monday since it seems to be the craze… and I can’t resist phrases that employ alliteration, after all. My first sans-meat trek began with a goal of finding the Cinnamon Snail (which I’ve tried before and loved) in Midtown east. But the line was long and slow-moving, and some girls behind me were having a conversation in preppy, sing-songy voices and they were absolutely doing my head in. Then I remembered I only had 5 bucks in my bag, and definitely did not want to leave the line to get cash only to come back to a line three times longer. I had a “fuck it” moment and decided to abandon Cinnamon Snail and explore.

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Although Pop Burger (58th St. btw. Mad+5th) garnered some attention from Midtown Lunch in its early days, it dropped off our radar after raising prices and ending the 88 cent burger specials. Despite the restaurant’s isolated location, it seems Pop Burger couldn’t stand up to the competition of burger joints like Shake Shack, Steak N Shake, and Five Guys. Grub street noticed Pop Burger was auctioning its beer tower systems and more, and according to Eater NY, it has since closed.

Beef Dogs at Asia Dog. Photo by Gracie Dulik on SENY

• Songified Five Guys review. Dayum! [HuffPo]
• The best NYC haute dogs are not in Midtown. [SENY]
• Food Trucks For Dummies. Maybe someone should buy the book and start a Midtown haute dog business … [Eater]
• Are Totto and Shake Shack overrated? [Zagat]
• Go Burger Truck is kind of meh [AHT]
• Best food trucks in NYC? [Chow via Eater]

Midtown Lunch’ers, I’m pleased to bring you this post about my favorite bar in Midtown so far, The Junction. Maybe it’s just my style, or maybe it was just a great day for everyone, everywhere in the world. All I can say is this: The Junction is the first bar I’ve visited as your happy hour correspondent that I couldn’t wait to write about when I got home. It’s a friendly, fun sports bar, and there are happy hour specials every day starting at 11 a.m. and stretching to 7 p.m. A perfect place for a liquid lunch!
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For season three, Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race is featuring competitors who have dreams of opening a food truck (but don’t yet have a business). The winner, in addition to $50,000, gets to keep the truck. Sounds like a brilliant idea – anybody remember America’s Next Great Restaurant? But that means no familiar faces, like our friends from Korilla, who got involved in a bit of a controversy last year. One team is from Parsippany, NJ, so if by chance they win, maybe they’ll try their luck in the Big Apple. The show premieres Sunday at 10 p.m.

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.

As someone who has lived in Houston and Denver, I love Mexican food. Really, any type of cuisine influenced by Mexican food: Tex-Mex, Southwestern, other types I have yet to discover. Uncle Moe’s strikes the sweet spot that so many others in New York miss (see my post about Rocking Horse Café, another Mexican restaurant that got it right, for further clarification about my opinions about New York Mexican restaurants.) The fact that Uncle Moe’s looked promising when I walked, by combined with a recommendation from a friend, meant I had to give it a try.
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• Jerk Pan cart: Found! [Midtown Eating]
• Where to check out even more food truck menus before you head out to lunch [Midtown Eating]
• Two year old mostarda thread resurrected! [Midtown Eating]
• Another ML Happy Hour is coming together. [Connections]
• ML forums spam conspiracy theories? Really? [Midtown Eating]