Midtown Lunch

I don’t know if 33rd Street and 5th Ave. is technically considered Koreatown, but if it is- than the Little Italy Pizza situated on that corner is the best pizza in Koreatown. I found it very difficult to travel down to that neck of the Midtown Lunch’ing woods for something other than bi bim bap and bulgogi, but after reading Ultraclay’s report on Little Italy Pizza– I knew I’d eventually have to give it a try.

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Free chicken confirmation from the KFC location on 50th and 7th. Sadly it was just a wing, so it left me wanting more (guess that’s the point). Tough to tell quality from one little wing but it was good enough- and looked better in person than in the fake grill mark photo in the poster. Nice appetizer to begin the lunch hour… (now moving on to something better.)

Update: Sorry, forgot to mention… No line at 11:45, but it shouldn’t be too bad throughout the day because they already have the chicken prewrapped and ready to go. Ordering food and paying for it might be a different story…

Photo courtesy of lazysundae

I haven’t been back to the Bayan Cafe, the just out of bounds Filipino place on 45th btw. 2+3rd, since I wrote about it a few years ago.  The most recent comment, from Lunch’er Nancy, was negative (apparently the prices have gone up) but according to this update posted to the Midtown Lunch flickr pool by lazysundae, things are just as good as I remembered them:

For 7.95 you get all this food. Kinda worth it if you eat half and save the rest. Unfortunately it was so good I ate all of it and had a stomachache for the rest of the afternoon. The mess at the top left is mixed veggies – bitter melon (ampalaya), butternut squash, green beans, eggplant, tomatoes in a sauce made with pork and bagoong (salty shrimp paste). At the bottom left is a chicken dish made with bananas (saging) that tasted like sweet adobo. Chicken esposito or something – I asked the guy twice what it was and I still can’t remember!

Related:
Bayan Cafe… Filipino Food Worth Breaking the Rules For

My kid sleeping through Lunch’er Tom’s attempt to break Don Lerman’s Go Go Curry Time

• You can get pretty delicious looking breakfast sandwiches at wichcraft all day long [Blondie and Brownie]
• 2 Bros 99 Cent Pizza is hoping to open their new 9th Ave. location store on Tuesday [Grub Street]
• If you want fried food, but only have $3 in your wallet- chicken house is the only option! [BLD Project]
• An out of bounds generic deli on 34th & 9th is now serving curry and roti on Wednesdays and Fridays [Fressa Girl]
• KFC’s new grilled chicken beats all competition (including Ranch 1) in a taste test [Epi-Log]
• Apparently the cuban sandwiches at Margon taste delicious with Pellegrino [Me So Hungry]
• Josh Ozersky weighs in on the burgers at HB Burger [Feedbag]
• The pies from Little Pie Company look pretty damn good [Food in Mouth]
• Vegetarians beware: the dough at Golosi is made from rendered pork fat [TONY via Elaine Perlov]

If you like to eat, chances are you like to drink (read: a lot of you are freakin’ lushes), so I thought maybe it was time to introduce a happy hour column to the site. Every week, 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.

My intrepid search for Midtown’s best free-buffet happy hour lead me this week to “Broadway” Langan’s Pub & Restaurant. Langan’s free appetizers are not widely publicized, perhaps because they don’t want us freeloaders making a dinner of it? The claim is they have a free buffet for patrons drinking at the bar, but after that whole Channel 4 happy hour failure, I felt a bit of trepidation. Would they pull the bait and switch? I called and they assured me of the happy hour so I rounded up the troops and set forth to feast on free food and good drinks.

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The complaints have been pouring in since it was reported that retired professional eater Don “Moses” Lerman has entered the Go Go Curry Eating Championship. His preliminary time (to eat 2 small portions of curry with rice) was an amazing one minute, and a lot of competitors are already getting discouraged.  After all, what are the chances a layman is going to beat Lerman.  (Pro competitive eaters are banned from entering any events unsanctioned by the IOCE.)

In fact, Midtown Lunch’er Tom- who agreed to be our representative in the competition, backed out half way through his “training”. The video, plus Go Go Curry’s response to the complaints, is after the jump…

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