Midtown Lunch

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.

Tappo (on 24th btwn 5th & 6th) opened just as I was leaving the Flatiron area, but with a menu full of lunch specials and combos at or under $10, my curiosity was piqued when I first stumbled across Tappo back in the fall. And once I saw Blondie’s post about their chicken parm, that settled it. I was hitting the place up the next time I made it to the neighborhood. So, when I had a lunch meeting with someone who had just recently started working nearby, I jumped at the opportunity to take a look for myself.

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The inevitable happened: it got cold. When the flimsy Salumè kiosk opened last summer, I wondered what would happen to them come winter. Well, here we are, and now that we’ve had a couple days of frigid weather, they appear to be wondering the same thing, because they’ve gone missing. But let me back up a sec.

On December 24, Salumè tweeted that their kiosk was moving due to the holiday festivities. That makes sense — the other kiosks also moved around a bit, too, as they did during Thanksgiving. But, while everyone else is back in their rightful spots (actually, Snack Box has moved down the block from 47th to 46th street, FYI), Salumè is nowhere to be found…

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Filicori Zecchini is not the only coffee establishment that expanding it’s empire to 46th street last year. A recent lunchtime walk around midtown east revealed a semi-newish location of Gregory’s on 46th street between Madison and Fifth that opened just a couple of months ago and has a full baking kitchen cranking out fresh pastries. While Gregory’s was omitted from the ML Readers’ Poll this year (mea culpa, Gregulars!), we promise to give them a long overdue full ML treatment very soon. If you’re a Gregory’s fan, let us know what we should try in the comments.

Gregory’s Coffee, 12 East 46th Street, (212) 661-1722

Every morning on my way to work I always pass by the guy wearing a sign and handing out menus for Joy Curry and Tandoor. I rarely crave Indian food (I wonder why?) and and usually manage to ignore the dude.  But one particularly cold morning, I thought to myself “it must be a tough job standing outside passing out menus and having everyone around ignore you.”  So, feeling sorry for the guy, I figured the least I could do was check out Joy Curry and Tandoor.

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I really enjoy soup but usually avoid it for lunch for fear of major mid-afternoon munchies. The exception to this rule would be homey and delicious Asian noodle soups, but I’m sure that’s no surprise to regular readers of this blog — we tend to be partial to the Asian goodies. Anyway, a month or two ago, I noticed that the Hot Soup cart had returned the northeast corner of 45th street and 6th avenue for the winter season. Soup carts are usually invisible to me, because of my previously stated aversion to cup-of-soup lunches, but the unusually long line caught my eye. I checked in recently and couldn’t resist trying the interesting (or maybe just weird) sounding “chicken jerky” soup listed on the menu.

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There is definitely no shortage of Mexican food in Midtown but good tasting authentic Mexican food is a bit harder to come by. Enter Mexico Blvd, a new food truck set to hit the streets in February, which according to their website plans to “bring to New York the food and culture of Mexico that we loved so much.  Apparently the owner of the truck has worked at Riverpark the Tom Collichio restaurant run by ‘wichcraft chef Sisha Ortuzar.  You can check our their menu and a gallery of photos on their website, plus follow them on twitter or the ML tracker for updates, and as soon as we know more we’ll let you know.

Brownie really needs to share these amazing looking doughnuts.

Brownie brought a tear to my eye with homemade brown buttered bacon doughnuts, Donny had dinner at Mary, Queen of Scots, Brian listed his top five dishes of 2011, Blondie does her own 2011 food recap, Chris checked out the new West Village Fatty Cue, Rachel brunched it up at One Hundred Acres and I’ve started a new photo project called Food/Work.

Elsewhere int he ML universe… Zach collected all the lunches he ate in 2011 in one gigantic photo, Jamie scored a banh mi at Philly Cafe and Andrea discovered a sandwich she calls a pork explosion in a generic deli downtown.

Here’s some news that slipped by almost everyone in New York: Korean coffee chain Caffe Bene is opening its first US location on 49th Street and Broadway sometime in the near future. The announcement was made by Wall Street Journal Asia back in April, with an anticipated opening during the Fall. As of a few weeks ago, they didn’t look close to opening. They were looking for a regional manager in early November which can mean that the opening will be soon. Anyone had their coffee in South Korea?

Before Thanksgiving, Dylan’s Candy Bar opened a pop-up store on the SW corner of 42nd and 6th, and apparently all of you did what we did: avoid the area at all costs until after the holidays. Well if you still want to stop by, the Pop-Up is going on through this Saturday. I checked it out only to find out that us lunch’ers have been missing out on Sprinkles cupcakes, and also the apocalypse is totally happening.

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