Midtown Lunch

Photo courtesy of Eater

I have to admit, when Mayor Bloomberg’s office submitted a letter in opposition to Council Member Jessica Lappin’s proposed anti-food truck law, I was pretty surprised.  There is no question that food trucks are hated by the rent paying business owners in New York City, and if there is one thing you can always count on with Bloomberg- it’s siding with the rent paying business owners.  Well, it turns out the Mayor’s support was in fact too good to be true.   On Friday morning Bloomberg spoke out against food trucks on his radio show:

“The Health Department does not have the staff to go and do it the way [Lappin] wants, but we’re trying to find another way to accomplish it because she is right… Moving stores into the streets is not what the streets were designed for, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are moving stores into the streets and they sit there and they park and they take up parking places and they block traffic.”

Really?  But that’s not what you said on Wednesday!

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A lunch’er wrote in on Friday to let us know that Ichi Umi, the all you can eat sushi buffet on 32nd btw. Mad+5th, was shuttered by the DOH last week.  It wasn’t exactly in the ML price range, but you know how we feel about all you can eat buffets!  We couldn’t find a listing on the DOH website for Ichi Umi, or Todai (the name it used to go by), so we’re not sure why they were shuttered.  But if anybody notices them reopen, let us know in the comments. (I’m sure there are more than a few competitive eaters who will be checking back!)

Related:
Attacking the Todai Sushi Buffet With Competitive Eating Masters

Fresh spring roll, stuffed with fried wrapper = GENIUS! Photo by Nick Solares

• Nick Solares tries out the prix fixe lunch at Ma Peche [SENY]
• Layne gets her bagels from the cart on 53rd and 7th [Taxi Gourmet]
• Lawyers finally allowed to lunch in the NYT Cafeteria [Grub Street]
• OBAO makes a damn good version of Pad Thai [Chubby Chinese Girl]
• Meskerem has better lunch specials than Queen of Sheeba [Ramen & Friends]
• ML Happy Hour is all about “hanging with weirdos and bonding over food” [Tasty Eating]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so every Friday afternoon 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.

Father’s Day is this Sunday and perhaps you’ll be hanging with dad in Midtown, maybe showing him your office or showing him the sights (if he’s in from out of town.) We also have the Subway Series (Mets vs Yankees) and the World Cup going this weekend making it the perfect chance for some father-son bonding over a beer. After all your dad doesn’t need a silk tie for Father’s Day, instead ‘tie one on’ with him at these approved ML watering holes…

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Damn, that looks good!

Miss Softee returned to action this week (not just to live blog the City Counil meeting on Wednesday) but to sell soft serve too!  Today she’s parked on 44th and 6th, and there’s been a bit of drama with the coffee vendor on that corner… so as a way to coexist they’ve decided to offer ice cream coffee floats for $4 for the rest of the day.  We can totally support that, and not just because it’s a delicious looking treat.  It’s also nice to see vendors working together, as opposed to the alternative.  Get out there and show your support…

Last month Grub Street reported that a new cart, called the “Famous Dal Cart”, had popped up in the East Village serving up dal, chicken tikka masala, and biriyani.   Well, it appears as if yesterday the cart was spotted on the NW corner of 32nd and Park Ave. (According to owner, they couldn’t make it during lunch in the EV.)  Our man Clay went out this morning to track it down, but as of 11am the cart was nowhere to be found.  If anybody spots this cart today, let us know where it is in the comments…

Now that Downtown has its very own section of the site, what are we going to post on Fridays at 10am? Answer… how about a new column devoted to those lunches just south of the ML boundaries. Every week we’ll post about a lunch in Murray Hill south, Gramercy, Flatiron, and everything in between… or as we’ll call it from now on: Flatiron Lunch.

Hidden away on 18th Street off of 5th Avenue, Cafe Prague is easy to miss. Even if you notice it, the small cafe can easily be mistaken for a generic deli. I almost walked right by it until I saw the signs promising Czech dishes like goulash and “Prague Hot Dogs.” How could I pass that up?

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