Midtown Lunch

Fall is upon us and with it a wave of new deliciousness coming to the Flatiron Lunch area. This year doesn’t quite have the crazy weekly openings that we saw last year, with Eataly, FoodParc and Hill Country Chicken popping up all in the same month or so. Still, there’s some interesting new lunch options coming our way. Find out more after the jump.

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Mother nature must love street meat. Once again the rain threatened… and once again, chicken and lamb over rice with hot sauce and white sauce prevailed. A couple of hours ago 25 Midtown Lunchers converged on Bryant Park to rank street meat from 15 different carts (as nominated by you.) The votes are in, and now the difficult part begins. Digestion. Oh… and the tallying. The tallying too. Stay tuned, the results will be announced in the next week or two.

Since I was so delighted by Potbelly’s Oatmeal & Chocolate Chip Cookie, I decided to go for a second round and try out their sugar cookie. Sugar cookies can be a tough dessert to pull off right, but evidently Potbelly has their dessert recipes down pat because this was another winner.

The cookie is the same size and price as the oatmeal chocolate chip, meaning that you get a big cookie for under $2. Also, just like the other cookie, this one was chewy with a little crispiness around the edges. The cookie has a pleasant amount of vanilla flavor and is sweet without being cloying. Plus there’s the added bonus of crunch from sugar sprinkled on top! The two wins in a row is making me excited to try their third dessert, the Dreambar.

Potbelly Sandwich Shop has two locations in Midtown.  One on 44th btw. Lex+3rd and one in the Rock Center Concourse.

Ever since I heard about the fried pork sandwich stuffed with plantains from Sophie’s (this was almost 2 years ago), I’ve been wanting to go and eat it. But like so many places in NYC, I was just too lazy or never had the time. So recently when I found myself walking down Lexington Ave I came upon Sophie’s and decided to was finally time check it out. But while scanning the trays and trays of food in front of me, something happened. I decided to call an audible and get the baked chicken with rice and beans instead ($9)

I’m a huge fan of the baked chicken with rice and beans at Salt & Pepper (on 33rd btw. 6+7th), so Sophie’s was going to have to be on their a-game to win me over.

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Only two days until the Vendy Awards, and longtime fans of the event might have noticed there is one thing missing… videos! Every year the Street Vendor Project releases videos of the finalists and we got our hands on them. After the jump hear Fatima Khan talking about the origin of the Tini Paki Boys Cart, and Arturo Macedo talking about how he turned a normal doughnut cart into a breakfast eggstravaganza!

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Do you wonder what the ML contributors do when they’re not eating lunch in Midtown? (We’re actually pretty easy to stalk!)

Brian’s took his beer adventures to Brooklyn, Donny sent a big ‘thank you’ for his Beard House show, Blondie had a delicious looking peach doughnut at Northern Spy, Brownie found quality hummus in Maine, Chris posted a slideshow from Five Day Market in Korea, and I photographed Midnight Brunch in LES last weekend.

Elsewhere in the ML universe… Zach scarfed down a delicious, but expensive falafel at Habayit in Los Angeles, Jamie found Cambodian dumplings in Kavei Express in Philly, and Andrea found a sandwich that’s worth the $10 price tag at Fresh Salt downtown.

When I saw that the old standby Cafe Charlie (40th btw Mad+5th) had added seafood pizza to their menu, I stopped in to see what it was all about. They have a decent mandoo bar-the only such one in that area of Midtown-so I wasn’t too scared about trying seafood from them. I was also intrigued by their sign of “gold” or “white” seafood pizza. What exactly would “gold” pizza entail? Answer: every Italian’s worst nightmare… yellow cheese on seafood.

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