Midtown Lunch

Photo courtesy of Lunch’er Peter

Thanks to Lunch’er Peter for sending over this tip… If you like grandma style pizza, but you’re sick of Jiannetto’s Pizza Truck, you’ll be interested to know that Valducci’s Pizza Truck is parked on 52nd and Lex today. According to our Downtown section, the truck is an offshoot of a Staten Island pizza place and is back after a fairly long hiatus. Andrea was lucky enough to score a free sample (they’ve been known to hand them out) and didn’t seem to hate it. Not sure how long they’ll last in this spot, but who knows. You can track them via Twitter, and we’ve added them to the ML Twitter Tracker.

Every Tuesday we turn over the site to a different Midtown Lunch’er for his or her recommendations for the best lunch in Midtown. This week it’s Alex, a PR person who wishes she worked a few blocks farther south.

Name: Alex

Age: 24

Occupation: Publicist and Founder of Chekmark Eats

Where in Midtown do you Work?: 36th St. and 8th avenue.

Favorite Kind of Food: Seafood, Sushi, Lobster Rolls, Sandwiches, Biscuits, Brussels Sprouts, Smoked Salmon Egg Scrambles, Cookies

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Indian Food.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: Amici 36 (8th Ave. btw. 35+36th) – Brick Oven Flatbread Sandwiches. I get smoked turkey, basil, tomato, balsamic and mozzarella. The bread is fantastic and doughy like pizza. They cut up the loaf after it’s done baking and put complimentary slices in a bowl to grab while you wait for your sandwich. (Probably the most popular station at the deli). Piccolo Café (on 40th btw. 7+8th) – Lobster Panini. HK Kitchen (on 9th Ave. btw. 39+40th) –Turkey and Brie with Sliced Apples and Dijionaise Sandwich. Macaron Café (36th btw. 6+7th) – Salad with chicken, vegetables macedoine and vinaigrette plus a choice of 15 different flavor macarons. Wondee Siam (52nd and 9th ave. location) – pad thai and Pad Num Mun Hoy (chicken sautéed with garlic, oyster sauce, celery onion, scallion, carrot, bell pepper and baby corn. *FYI it’s BYOB so a great place to check out after work, too.)

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At some point last week, Num Pang (on 41st btw Lex+3rd) began doing the ol’ switcheroo on their menu. Thanks to Lunch’er Aaron for tipping us off to the fact that the grilled peach sandwich got a short extension, and they’ve added a new boneless pork spareribs sandwich and a maple barbecue turkey wings platter (with black pepper rice and a spicy papaya slaw) to the menu. I went for the sandwich…

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With Potbelly Sandwich slowly blanketing Midtown, I decided to finally stop by their newly open Rock Center location to check out the desserts. When compared to some of the other dessert options around, theirs are fairly cheap, and apparently baked fresh for the shops. Since I was in a cookie mood, I picked up their oatmeal and chocolate chip cookie for some afternoon snacking. At less than $2, I was pleasantly surprised with what I got.

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We get pretty excited when new halal carts pop up in Midtown.  Even though there is practically one on every block, new ones don’t come along that often.  So when I spotted Tazy Halal Food (on44th btw 2+3rd) last week right across the street from my office, I had to check it out. The menu looked like pretty standard Halal cart stuff (chicken and rice, lamb and rice, gyro and etc), but the cart quickly proved me wrong.

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Photo courtesy of @jareddiamond

Is Kwik Meal (on 45th and 6th) no longer a “Midtown Lunch”?!  We don’t know much about the price of lamb, but apparently it’s gone up- possibly as much as $3 a pound, if this sign is to be believed.  If the language seems confusing, allow us to break it down for you… Kwik Meal’s famous lamb over rice (one of the only versions in Midtown that uses real lamb and not gyro meat) is now $11, up from $8, and their lamb on pita is a whopping $10, up from $7.  Kwik Meal was always a bit on the pricey side, and we understand that food costs are what they are, but $11 for a plate of street meat seems kind of insane.  Will you pay?  Or has the original Street Meat Palooza champ just priced themselves out of the market?

What a very strange and heartbreaking episode of the Great Food Truck Race last night. If anybody’s been following it, you know that our hometown favorites Korilla have been consistently on the top. They’ve used some clever strategies along with their delicious Korean tacos to get ahead in the game. We knew that they had made it into the top four, but as it turns out, that’s as far as they got. Last night’s episode was a difficult one for all the trucks because they were not allowed to use meat in the carnivorous town of Memphis, and Korilla really seemed to suffer without their usual massive lines.

And when the elimination was announced, there was a twist nobody saw coming.

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Good enough for Philly? Feisty Foodie says yes.

• Carl’s Steaks is good enough to be open in Philadelphia [Feisty Foodie]
• You can get vegetarian Korean food at HanGawi [FitR]
• Atomic Wings are now available at Subway Inn [FitR]
• Colin Quinn will be a judge at this year’s Vendy Awards [Gothamist]
• Larry David was traumatized by Mr. Softee as a child [Gothamist]
• The Burger Joint is one of NY’s 10 best hotel restaurants [FitR]
• Shocker: The dude from No 7 Sub hates both Potbelly and Earl of Sandwich [Grub Street]