Midtown Lunch

I guess all you have to do is ask! NYC Cravings, the new Chinese fried chicken and dumplings truck that Food in Mouth wrote about last week, is going to try and come to Midtown for lunch today. They are looking to park on 45th & 6th… but as we all know new trucks have trouble parking their first time in Midtown, so we’ll see what happens. Want to be the first to know where they end up? You can follow them on twitter.

Confirmed @10:57 AM via Twitter: “First time in midtown. We’re on 46th 45th  st near 6th ave. Look for the pale yellow. :D” (Sorry, they twittered it wrong!)

Cinco de Mayo Lunch at Las Poblanitas

• A jewelry store on 57th Street was robbed yesterday while the security guards were out to lunch. I wonder where they were eating… [Gothamist]
• Blog dedicated to finding good Japanese curry in the US gives Go Go Curry a perfect score [Americurry via Serious Eats]
• Burger Joint is the only Midtown hamburger to make the Burger of the Month Club’s top 10 [NYT via AHT]
• More praise for the soups at Dean & Deluca [BLD Project]
• Sandwiches and salads at TGI Fridays are $5 for a limited time… [Official Website]
• … just watch out for those snake heads [Consumerist]
• The chef of Daisy May’s is on Oprah today (along with the CEO of KFC) [TONY Feed Blog]
• Uh- yeah, hello.  Can we get this new truck to come to Midtown please??? [Food in Mouth]

And for those who just can’t get enough of the little guy… there’s a special edition, bonus “free food” photo after the jump.

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I haven’t really found any inexpensive Mexican bars in Midtown. There’s some fine places to get Mexican food, like El Rey del Sabor, or the out of bounds Tulcingo Del Valle (and I finally got Zach to write about Las Poblanitas this week!) But none of those places really qualify for a ML happy hour. So, when Cinco de Mayo came up this Tuesday I was a bit at a loss where to take everyone. We decided to make the best of it and just bar hop in search of a good margarita and happy hour. Every bar was offering Cinco de Mayo specials after all, so we kept it simple.

Our first stop was the Cornerstone Tavern. They had $5 margaritas, Hornitos shots, Coronas and an assortment of $4 drafts. Free chips and salsa were at the bar and the decorations came straight from your local party store. The ‘ritas were too sweet, but satisfied the craving. I doubt they have free chips on a regular night and the happy hour special wasn’t that great so I’d suggest skipping Cornerstone (which is what we did after one drink.) That’s when we came across Opal: a cocktail lounge serving up 2 for 1 quesadillas and drinks ’til 9pm. This was clearly the place to go. There were two bars sections, and the main bar in the front had some of the coolest punk rock artwork that I have yet to see in the corporate blandness of Midtown.

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Remember the pamphlet/fold-out-poster the Street Vendor Project handed out to street vendors back in March?  (If you missed it we posted the PDF here.) It had a ton of factoids that any fan of street food would find pretty interesting (for example, did you know the average NYC vendor salary is $14,000 year, and Jerry Seinfeld and Jay-Z use to be NYC vendors?)  Well if you were as fascinated by the pamphlet/fold-out-poster as we were, Urban Ominibus has posted a comprehensive look at the making of the pamphlet, and the work that went into distributing it- plus a link to where you can get your own copy. I just ordered mine!

Unable to ignore the prospect of 50% off the hot food at a by the pound buffet, I stopped by Green Cafe yesterday (on 44th btw. Mad+5th)  just to see what was going on… survey the scene if you will (before heading to KFC).  Like most commenters noted, it’s a pretty generic Midtown deli- and for $8 a pound, the hot/cold bar is definitely not worth it.  ($4 a pound, on the other hand…)  There was, however, one thing that caught my eye:  gigantic friend shrimp!  I’ve been duped by shrimp at a by the pound buffet before (the fake shrimp fiasco of 2006), but these were clearly real shrimp.  Well, I shouldn’t say “clearly”… they clearly had real tails sticking out the side of  a ton of breading that looked like it could possibly house a real shrimp.  I wouldn’t put it past one of these places to insert real tails, into a fake fried shrimp carcass (would you?)

I had to find out for myself.

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Overwhelmed by the response, and clearly terrified of the prospect of a chicken-less Mother’s Day (their busiest day of the year) KFC has suspended their free chicken promotion.  They are issuing “rain checks”, which is code for forcing you to jump through so many hoops you’ll just give up on the free chicken.  Of course that’s not going to happen… did they even see what people went through yesterday for their $4 worth of chicken?

To get this rain check, you must visit your local KFC, fill out a form, attach your coupon to it, and give it to the manager or mail it in. They’ll send you a new coupon, which will also include a free soda. Mother’s Day crisis averted!

They posted a video apology, which was sadly *not* recorded by Oprah- but by the CEO of the company. On a positive note, he’s sounds like he’s from New Zealand (and is giddy like a guy who hasn’t slept for a week) giving it a borderline Flight of the Concords feel. The video is after the jump…

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Our Happy Hour Correspondent Mamacita vowed never to return to Channel Four (on 48th btw. 5+6th) after their promise of a free happy hour buffet turned out to be a load of BS. Well, I think she might change her mind after reading this. Grub Street is reporting that you can actually order the bacon explosion from Channel Four. I know a ton of you have heard about the bacon explosion (you sent me enough emails about it!) but for those who haven’t, it’s basically two pounds of ground pork, rolled into two pounds of criss crossed bacon, covered in BBQ sauce, and cooked. According to GS, it’s not on the actual menu- but it can “be specially requested by a large party if you call a day or two in advance.”

I wonder if they’ll do it for lunch… because this needs to be tried, like- now.