Midtown Lunch

Bian Dang, formerly known as NYC Cravings, has returned after a season of focusing on the brick and mortar world of Food Gallery 32. On Tuesday they hit my turf, the Flatiron District, in a brand new truck- but still serving up their usual menu (on 24th Street btw. Park+Mad). And yesterday they were in the Financial District.  Today?  They’re back in the fold, and planning to park on 53rd St. and Park Ave. (their old Thursday spot.)  But you’ll probably want to check their twitter account or the ML Twitter Tracker before heading out just to be safe.

The recent winner of the 2010 ‘Best Coffee As Voted On By You’ (and my personal favorite cup of Joe), Financier Patisserie recently contacted us to give a heads up that they’re now carrying retail tins of coffee at all nine of their locations. The coffee is roasted daily in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is available in either their original blend, or their single origin fair trade espresso roast. Both flavors come in 8 oz tins ($8.50), and be purchased as either pre-ground or whole bean. Decaf is also available for the pre-ground versions.

To promote this new launch, they offered to give us free gift baskets to sample, but we’d rather hand these out to the loyal readers of Midtown lunch!  All you have to do is reply in the comments and tell us what goes wrong with your day if you don’t get your coffee fix?

The contest rules, plus a photo of what you’ll win is after the jump.
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Like many other Lunch’ers, my morning commute brings me right by a Dunkin Donuts (not all that surprising since it’s the most prevalent chain in the city). Yesterday morning, as I made my coffee run, I noticed signage for their new Big ‘N’ Tasty, a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich that appeared to be cradled between two slices of French Toast–$4.99 with a medium coffee combo–aka a bacon topped mass market knockoff of one of my favorite breakfasts at Shopsin’s, the So Good. Even though I knew that this 590 calorie monstrosity was likely to disappoint, I had to at least give it a shot. Read more »

The Best Sandwich Ever? Photo by Ultraclay.

Brownie was busy drooling over DQ blizzards, while Blondie was busy cooking brown butter brownies out of Bon Appetit Mag. Ultraclay was in Barcelona, where he tried a sandwich that Mark Bittman called the best sandwich he’s ever had. Donny tried the expensive and small but delicious media noche from Court Street Grocers, Chris H. found the vegetarian food at Balaboosta surprisingly exciting.

Around the rest of the ML Universe… Andrea was excited to discover Crosby Connection sandwiches inside a Downtown chocolate shop, Jamie had a Reading Terminal Market Amish sandwich showdown over on the Philly site, and I ate sushi from a car wash in Los Angeles.

Yesterday, Luncher “Matt” emailed in with this report:

Washoku Cafe (aka Negi-Ya) may have closed! A coworker tells me the gate’s down, there’s no sign, and they stopped taking credit cards yesterday. It is the first of the month …

Calls to the Japanese cafe and noodle shop just get voicemail. Personally, I’m going to be very disappointed if the only source of decent tonkotsu this side of 40th Street has gone under. The weather might be warm today, but I know I’m going to need more soup before the summer comes.

Related:
Soup’s on at Negi-Ya (aka Washoku Cafe)

I love a good deal as much as anyone else, but it’s been years since I’ve found any great pleasure surfing the dollar menu anywhere. That said, when I saw the sign for $1 burgers and dogs at Pop’s in last week’s Links, I knew I’d have to investigate. Lunchtime Monday afternoon, I went over to 7th Avenue to check it out.

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Photo courtesy of Amareyui

With all the high profile new ramen spots that have opened in Midtown over the past year (Hide Chan, Totto Ramen) it’s good to see an old school spot get a little love… Eater asked Chef Bill Telepan to recommend an under the radar spot and he went with Sapporo (on 49th btw. 6+7th).

“[My wife and I] love the Shoyu Ramen with pork or she’ll get a veggie version. But one day I saw someone eating a rice dish that looked great, it’s called Cha-han, and it is a fried rice dish that I add pork to. It’s cheap, quick & yummy.”

Sapporo, 152 W. 49th St., btw. 6th & 7th 212-869-8972

I like the sandwiches at ‘wichcraft, but the price to size ratio…not so much. I was excited to read about the new sandwiches that they added in their recent menu overhaul, but sad to see that their prices had inched up as well. Still I’ve been a fan of doing their all day breakfast sandwiches for lunch, so their new potato leek frittata caught my eye. I had to check it out. Read more »

• Sweetery’s ice cream sandwiches are the best [Midtown Eating]
• Pops $1 food shop is ok [Midtown Eating]
• Breast milk ice cream?!  No thanks… [Miscellaneous]
• Del Frisco’s and Keen’s are the best steakhouses in Midtown [Midtown Eating]