Midtown Lunch

Every Tuesday I 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 Wai, a breakfast loving cooking instructor who has redefined dumplings with a brand new cookbook: “The Dumpling: A Seasonal Guide”.  And after he gives his recommendations for lunching in Midtown, we’ll give away a copy…

Name: Wai

Age: 38

Occupation: Cooking instructor and co-author of The Dumpling: A Seasonal Guide

Where in Midtown do you Work?: Officially, I guess I’m downtown. But while researching my book, I spent many long days at the 42nd Street Library. Additionally, I worked in midtown for many years at 43rd Street and 6th Avenue, Worldwide Plaza on 50th Street and 8th Avenue, and the most food desolate of all, at 59th Street and Lexington.

Favorite Kind of Food: Before any great lunch, there is of course breakfast. I love a tasty breakfast. Fried eggs over medium with fresh tomatoes and chunky home fries, a big bowl of noodles in steaming hot broth, an omelet or frittata with roasted vegetables and mushrooms, congee (heavy on the cilantro and ginger) dipped with a fried cruller, or any crusty, chewy bread toasted or not with some butter. I also love asopao (a type of soupy rice) and fried sweet plantains for breakfast.

There are a few restaurants in Chinatown that specialize in Hong Kong-style breakfast. This includes a quirky assortment of western-inspired dishes like HK-style spaghetti, ham (or Spam) and egg sandwiches, elbow macaroni with soup, 1-inch thick toast with almond paste or condensed milk, as well as more traditional Cantonese dishes like rolled rice crepes with scallions and dried shrimp, congee, steam buns, noodles, and one-pot rice casseroles. And, of course, there’s Ovaltine or Horlicks to wash it all down.

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Overly spicy foods, like when something is hot to the point where you can’t taste any of the other flavors of the dish. I also vehemently dislike any dishes that contain baby corn.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: Café Edison (on 47th btw. B’way+8th) wins me over every time. Maybe it’s the no-nonsense service or the giant matzo ball-beach ball dangling from the ceiling. I love coming here and eating at the counter. The fried fish sandwich is big and generous enough for 2 meals. And the matzo brei and matzo ball soup are among the best in the city. I always try to save some room for the overstuffed cheese blintzes.

I love starchy things in general and Japanese noodles in particular, which makes Men Kui Tei (on 55th btw. 5+6th) a favorite. The ramen there is not as salty or fatty as you’ll find at other places in the city. Mostly, I have the Miso Ramen, Vegetable Ramen, or the Hiyashi Ramen Salad, but I recently discovered their fried rice…naturally sweet and chewy Japanese rice, lightly fried, and delicately seasoned with soy sauce.

More favorites after after the jump…

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Stopped into Cafe Zaiya (on 41st btw. Mad+5th) yesterday just to see what was going on (I can’t resist whenever I’m in the area), and noticed a couple of things.  First off, they’ve moved all the check out registers to the new coffee/shave ice/frappe/ice cream area (where the Beard Papa used to be.)  I don’t know if it was my imagination, or the fact that it was a slow Monday, but things seemed to be a little less hectic.

I also spotted a sign for their latest offering, which seems perfect for winter… warm ice cream!?!

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Gourmet’s Associate Art Director Kevin Demaria photographed the final days of Gourmet Magazine and has posted them to a website. It’s a sad but touching tribute to a place that meant a great deal to many people (some of them Midtown Lunch’ers), but I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the Lazzara’s pizza boxes.  A worthy last supper indeed. [via Eat Me Daily]

The Michael “Baoguette” Huynh train continues to plow across New York City.  O Bao, his Pan-Asian noodle shop moving into the old Bunchberries space on 53rd btw. 2+3rd, was supposed to open yesterday but it’s been pushed back to next Monday, 11/9 (apparently there is something about Mondays being a lucky day.)  It will be the first of four spots he’ll open in four weeks (the rest all are Downtown.)  But that’s the not the end of the “Huynhews”.  He told me yesterday that there are plans to open a Baoguette in the Grand Central Terminal food court (on 42nd and Park). Now we won’t have to walk all the way to 25th and Lex for a top notch banh mi (sorry Boi Sandwich, but you just can’t compete with these guys.)  No date has been set for that opening, but he said that putting anything in Grand Central “takes a long time”. [Photo courtesy of Eater]

Related:
Midtown Proper is Finally Getting a Bao-Something
Baoguette’s Out of Bounds Banh Mi is Worth the Extra Walk

• What are your favorite spots to eat dinner in Midtown? [Midtown Eating]
• The Asiadog topped with braised pork belly is worthwhile [Eating Outside Midtown]
• Will Dos Toros in Union Square be the answer to all of our burrito dreams? [Eating Outside of Midtown]
• Anybody tried Rosa Mexicano from a vending machine? [Miscellaneous]
• Do you like Luciano’s?  Too bad, it’s closed. [Midtown Eating]

Posting the news this morning that the Jamaican Dutchy cart was going on vacation for three weeks made me hungry for some curry goat with rice and peas.  So I walked over to 48th and Park to try out the 4 month old Jerk Pan cart, only to discover that it was gone!?  Anybody know what happened to them?  If you do, let us know in the comments.

Also missing was the Steak Truck, which apparently has decided to try out some new spots.  Today they were in the Bronx.  (In fairness to them, we were warned.)  This all comes on top of last week’s news that the Trini Paki Boys carts are going to be gone for a bit while they sort out their permit issues.

Anybody have any good news to share?

So it looks like Eliana, the $1 hot dog lady on the NW corner of 43rd and 6th, has survived the onslaught. You might remember that she was part of the crew of carts that got kicked out of that spot by the cops awhile back for parking on a sidewalk that was supposedly too narrow to be a legal vending spot for carts. She even had her cart confiscated, despite the fact that later measurements clearly showed that the sidewalk was the proper width. The other two carts (which included the 3rd El Rey del Sabor cart) decided to cut their losses and set up on the NE corner of 43rd and 6th. Eliana tried that for a bit but, after working the opposite corner for many years without issue, she was eager to return. Thankfully the Street Vendor Project (which hosts the Vendy Awards every year) stepped in and not only helped her get her cart back but also helped deflect any other obstacles to her returning to her original corner.

It looks like she’s there for good again (on the NW corner of 43rd and 6th), and last week I decided to swing by and actually try one of these $1 hot dogs.

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