Midtown Lunch

Despite the rain it looks like Dan Delaney and Fancy Fast Food managed to make it to the Famous Halal Guys cart on 53rd and 6th yesterday to fancify a plate of street meat for a future episode of VendrTV. Both camps were being all hush hush about exactly what they did (I suggested a charcuterie plate!), but this curious looking photo was posted online last night. A tagine isn’t a huge stretch from the original dish, but it’s still the fanciest plate of street meat I’ve ever seen! And it looks like they might have even cut up the rice to make it look like cous cous. Maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye. Guess we’ll just have to wait for the episode to see!

So I finally got a chance to swing by Bombay Eats yesterday, the Indian restaurant on 52nd btw. 8+9th that serves New York style pizza with toppings like chicken tikka and saag paneer.  The first time I visited, they weren’t selling the Indian pizza by the slice so I had to ask them to take a piece of cheese pizza and top it with saag paneer from their buffet (which is $10.95 all you can eat at lunchtime, but doesn’t include pizza.)  Of course after Midtown Lunch’ers descended on the restaurant in full force, they decided to finally offer the Indian pizza by the slice.

I stopped by yesterday to check it out.

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Over on Serious Eats: New York Joe DiStefano has filed the first report on Lan Sheng, the new Sichuan restaurant that recently opened on 39th btw. 5+6th (right across the street from Szechuan Gourmet.)  All the food he ate was part of a free “press dinner”, and much of it isn’t even on the menu yet, but hot damn the photos look tasty!  He also found out the chef trained in Chengdu, and the “number two” chef used to work at Wu Liang Ye.  As we reported last week, the lunch specials menu (which is what I’m most interested in) doesn’t really have too many Sichaun specialties on it, but the owners reassured me yesterday via email that they are working on a new menu that will be ready in a week.  And… “there will be a lot more Sichuan food on the lunch specials.”  Nice.

Related:
Lan Sheng Opens; Mangia Introduces New “Organic” Concept
New Sichuan Spot is Just One of Many Changes to 39th Street

While Phillies fans and Yankees haters are choking on their free cheesesteaks this afternoon, fans of the Bronx bombers can celebrate the start of the World Series with… wait for it… cupcakes!  Both Crumbs and the Cupcake Stop Truck are offering Yankees cupcakes starting today.  Crumbs has a single limited edition cupcake for sale, while the Cupcake Stop Truck will be selling cupcakes featuring the entire Yankees lineup, both as singles and as a complete set dozen (alright, that actually sounds pretty cool.)

Need to find one of the 354 Crumbs locations in Midtown? You can do that here, and the Cupcake Stop Truck will be parked today on 47th and 3rd Ave. until 6pm (although they only have 10 dozen and I’m guessing they will go fast.)

• Kyotofu will be giving away cupcake sampler packs on Friday [Midtown Eating]
• Why does everybody compare Shake Shack to In N Out? They’re completely different. [Eating Outside Midtown]
• You can get Korean tacos and lobster rolls from a new generic deli in the Flatiron [Eating Outside Midtown]
• BXL is a good place to go for mussels [Midtown Eating]
• Speaking of the Shake Shack, sometimes they use frozen meat [Eating Outside Midtown]

This just in from Lunch’er “Matt”: “Not sure if this has been reported yet (I didn’t see anything) but the Free Foods NYC on 52nd btw. 3rd+Lex is closed! It was definitely open last week when I passed by and I even saw the chef ordering product out front. In hindsight maybe he was taking inventory! Anyways I figured I’d pass along the news so you can break the bad news to the masses. The windows were completely papered up.” According to the owner most of the business at that location was delivery, so they decided to consolidate operations. I’m guessing that means if you used to have food delivered from the 52nd location, you can still order from the original FreeFoods NYC on 45th btw. 5+6th.

Related:
Matt Kenney’s Free Foods NYC Expanding into Midtown East
FreeFoods BBQ Brisket Sandwich is Another Triumph (And if They Raise the Price I’ll Kill ‘Em)