Midtown Lunch

“This is Why You’re Fat” the book comes out next week, and to celebrate they’re having a food truck scavenger hunt in NYC next Thursday. It involves taking your photo with 6 different incredibly gross items from 6 different NYC food trucks.  Here’s all the info direct from TIWYF co-founder Jessica Amason:

This is Why You’re Fat is taking over NYC’s most popular food trucks for a day, giving the nation’s fascination with fatty foods the 2.0 treatment, all over again! I’ve created a Twitter contest involving six of Manhattan’s most popular Twittering food trucks to join the *Gross Food Movement and celebrate the blog to book that made it all happen.

When: Oct. 29 (the week of publication), from 11am to end of day.

Where: Throughout Manhattan (mostly downtown locations).

All the contest rules, plus a sneak peak at the list of the 6 food trucks that will be participating is after the jump.

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I have never been to Foley’s (on 33rd btw. B’way+5th) and I know this is a stupid marketing gimmick… but any spot that wants to glorify Toots Shor (and by transitive property Frank Sinatra) is all right in my book.  Tomorrow (Weds 10/21) is Foley’s 2nd Annual Toots Shor day, celebrating the famous Manhattan restaurant with a special menu of Toots Shor’s dishes at their original 1959 prices.  That means an $8 “Sinatra” Sirloin steak, $4 “Mickey Mantle” corned beef and cabbage, $4 “Jackie Gleason” fried scallops w/ fries, and more.  Mamacita wrote about their Happy Hour, but only tried the pizza and onions rings.  Anybody eaten at Foley’s before?  It’d have to be really bad to not be worth it at these prices…

Related:
Midtown Happy Hour: Mamacita Loves the Balls at Foley’s Pub

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 Janet, a PR consultant who loves Asian food and is looking for a good cup of coffee.

Name: Janet

Age: 30

Occupation: PR Consultant

Where in Midtown do you Work?: 7th Avenue between 40th and 41st

Favorite Kind of Food: All Asian – Korean, Thai, Japanese, Sushi, Vietnamese, (more or less anything that involves noodles or rice), Italian, Indian, french fries, pulled BBQ pork sandwiches, any kind of seafood – especially oysters, mussels, lobster and crab!

Least Favorite Kind of Food: Not going to lie – Mexican. I don’t hate it but it’s definitely not my go to choice of cuisine. Also, I don’t really have a sweet tooth so all those cupcake/dessert places…can definitely do without.

Favorite Place(s) to Eat Lunch in Midtown: Kati Roll (on 39th btw. 5+6th), Woorijip (on 32nd btw. B’way+5th), Duke’s, Cafe Zaiya (on 41st btw. Mad+5th), Hale & Hearty, Lazzara’s Pizza (on 38th btw. 6+7th). I’m originally from Toronto, Canada where the only street food is hot dogs and there are no buffet/salad tables in delis so I’m in love with the abundance of street food options and delis here.

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Just a friendly reminder that “Delivery Week” has begun, Seamless Web’s clever take on Restaurant Week. $12.09 gets you an app, entree, and dessert or drink from a number of different places in Midtown, and just like the real Restaurant Week the arguments discussions have already begun over whether or not its worth it. This was posted to the ML Forums by Lunch’er “hightemp”:

I was going to order “Delivery Week” for lunch today but perusing the options in my neighborhood I opted against it. Seems a lot of places are switching out “dessert” with “beverage”. And in one instance <> pop burger <> the savings add up to a grand total of …. wait for it… 41 cents. Anyone tried delivery week yet? Any good deals to be had or things worth trying?

$12.09 for a burger, 1/2 an order of shrimp dumpling pops, and a drink from the Volstead is still a pretty good deal (although I was hoping in vain for lobster roll sliders!) And just like Restaurant Week, Delivery Week actually lasts two weeks (through October 31st). Anybody else found any keepers? Post them to the thread in the forum>>

File this one under “Knew That Was Gonna Happen”. The generic deli “Cafe du Monde” (on 37th btw. 5+6th) was forced to change their name to Cafe Amande. Apparently the name Cafe du Monde is already in use by, oh, I don’t know… the most famous fried dough maker in the country. The funny thing is, I don’t think the owners of the NYC Cafe du Monde even knew about the New Orleans institution. Yesterday I asked one of the girls behind the counter if they had to change their name because of Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Her response: “Yeah! How did you know?” She was completely surprised to hear it was a pretty famous place.

Related:
Cafe Du Monde is Coming to Midtown
New Orleans Jazzfest 2007 Weekend Wrap Up

The overhyped by the press, but underwhelming from a food standpoint, La Cense Burger Truck announced on Twitter yesterday that they’d be hibernating until Spring. Winter is traditionally a slower time for street food sales, but for most vendors it’s still worth coming to work (as long as you don’t sell ice cream.) So why is La Cense closing up shop? Who knows for sure, but I say good riddance. I know it’s mean, but I feel compelled to be against any street vendor that simply seems to be using their truck for marketing purposes. After the initial lines, the demand for La Cense seemed to die off pretty quickly. But they can afford to stay on the street whether they make money or not because they’re owned by a large mail-order company, who in my estimation is just using the truck to promote their line of gourmet beef. And, sadly, it’s worked. Despite the mixed reviews by the public, they’ve been included in tons of street vendor trend pieces.

So why does this bother me so much?

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If you make a burger in this town with meat from Pat La Freida’s you are pretty much guaranteed some automatic hype from certain bloggers.  But apparently now you also get this nifty bumper sticker!  I spotted this one on the front door of HB Burger (on 43rd btw. B’way+6th).  Clearly the La Freida bumper sticker holds far less gravitas than, say, the “Recommended by Midtown Lunch” stickers you might have seen- but I suppose it couldn’t hurt.

Related:
HB Burger May Not be a “Midtown Lunch” But It’s a Damn Good Burger
Apparently It’s Not La Freida’s, It’s What You Do With It