Midtown Lunch

I’ve been patiently waiting for Dee Daa Balanced Thai (44th btw Lex+3rd) to open, so much so that I even braved the opening day crowd shenanigans! One of our main questions was “What is balanced Thai?” According to them, it means “tastes good” and “good for you.” With all this talk of the newish Pure Thai Shophouse, I’d been craving some good Thai worse than ever- and quite frankly could care less whether it is good for me or not. Dee Daa may not take the best Thai in Midtown prize away from the west side, but with some work it could fill our east side Thai food gap.

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In the months since the Korilla BBQ truck first hit the streets they’ve revamped their menu to make the truck more efficient. You still have the option of mixing and matching toppings but they’ve put together some “best of” combos. I liked the Pork Chosun Bowl I first tried in the fall, so I decided to go with their Wild Child combination ($8) with their house made tofu and a more than liberal dousing of their k’lla sauce. Read more »

The Newly Open Pop’s Dollar Shop. Photo by DNAinfo.

• Pop’s Dollar Food Shop has opened in the back of Gyro II [DNAinfo]
• Gazala Place has a $10 lunch special [Food in Mouth]
• Desi Food Truck’s vegetarian platter looks terrible, but tastes delicious [Ramen & Friends]
• 4Food makes some of the craziest fries in NYC [Eater]
• Best sandwiches under $6 list includes Margon [SENY]
• A look at more of Food Gallery 32’s offerings [Feisty Foodie]
• Tulcingo del Valle makes a good cemita [Fork in the Road]
• Schnipper’s is Midtown Lunch’er approved! [Tasty Eating]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so every week our Happy Hour Correspondent “Mamacita” will post about a different bar in Midtown that fits the Midtown Lunch mentality: unhealthy food, not lame (unless it’s lame in a cool way), and most importantly… cheap.

NYC’s own prognosticating groundhog, Staten Island Chuck, might have predicted we’re in for an early spring, but the cacophony of clanking from my radiators say otherwise. In any case, I hope he’s right because tornados, blizzards, and howling winds have had me dreaming of sipping a wheat lager as I brown in the sun at my favorite watering hole as opposed to seeking cover in the winterized bunker I call my apartment at the end of day. So this installment of ML Happy Hour is a bit more PSA then AA, with a look at Irish Exit and some booze news for spring.

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Becoming a mobile vendor is not quite as easy as ehow would have you believe. So in anticipation of Softee Season 2011 we’ve asked Chrissy (aka Miss Softee) to show us the process of what it takes to become an ice cream vendor in Midtown. We’ll meet the potential new vendors, and track their progress through the selection and training process as all of the candidates make their way towards being a full fledged Mr. Softee vendor. Last week you met the first few hires, this week Team Softee 2011 adds more drivers to the crew. Take it away Miss Softee!

This week all of the new midtown Softee crew headed down to the Department of Health to register to take their Mobile Food Vending classes. Most of the group will go through the actual class in early March, but in the meantime, they’re getting more and more excited to meet you all and are imagining all the ways to bring something unique to their trucks!! I’m pleased to introduce you to a few more drivers that were hired last week. Read more »

Every day, the Chef’s Table at Cucina & Co. in the Rock Center Concourse offers a different lunch for $9.50 from 11:30 to 12:30. The lunches change each week (Brownie enjoyed their pork tenderloin medallions with pasta), but Fridays are always the same. Chef Juan anchors each week with his cheeseburger sliders, and they’re popular enough to have gotten the attention of Concourse neighbor Tri Tip. We’ve never had the sliders though, so I decided to head out for an early lunch last Friday (the Chef’s Table is known to run out of food). See what I found after the jump.
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The writers of Midtown Lunch (spurred on by Zach, no doubt) all seem to have a rapt fascination and begrudging respect for General Tso’s chicken – the faux-Chinese dish of deep fried lumps of breaded chicken, slathered in an unidentifiable glaze. Food snobs may dismiss this humble dish, but for the sentimental type, this dish is strongly evocative of simpler times – perhaps your childhood mall food court or the take-out dive that you’d frequent as a broke college student. And when we heard that Bian Dang in the Food Gallery 32 would be carrying this dish, it was a done deal.

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Every Friday our man UltraClay goes 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.

Last week in my round up of Flatiron food trucks I casually mentioned Los Tacos de Atlixco.  Maybe you took my word for it and checked it out, but for those who need to see visual proof this post’s for you.  I came across Los Tacos de Atlixco on the corner of 6th Avenue and 29th Street by accident a week or so ago. Seeing the truck crowd of Latino laborers from the area crowding around this old Fed Ex truck (the sign still says “No cash on board”), I changed my plans and decided I had to give it a try.

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As New Englander from way back–let’s put it this way, some of my relatives were on the Mayflower and the others met the boat–I should probably hold Boston Cream with a certain degree of reverence. But frankly, I’m not the biggest fan of the vanilla custard, chocolate frosted donut (or the cake that masquerades as a pie for that matter). If you up the chocolate, well, then you might get me interested. Dunkin Donuts did just that with their new chocolate donuts. I can only pass their “new donut” signage for so long before breaking down. I’m just not that strong. So I decided to check it out. At least I could let my fellow lunchers know if it was worth it.

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