Fatty Egg Roll, Midtown Links & the End of the Week Wrap Up
As much as I’m embarrassed to admit it, I used to be a Grateful Dead fan in High School. This may not be that funny to you (since you only know me as a fat guy who likes to stuff his face at lunch time), but most people who know me would be pretty surprised to hear that. What nobody would be surprised to hear is my favorite part of going to a Dead show was these gigantor fatty egg rolls that would be sold outside beforehand. They were huge, and stuffed fat, usually with shredded carrots and cabbage and they would give you a little packet of duck sauce so you could walk around squirting little bits into the egg roll before you took a bite. For $3 it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve never seen them anywhere since. Man I miss those things. (Where have you gone strange Grateful Dead following hippie giant egg roll makers????)
Anyway, you can imagine my excitement when I walked by Aron’s Kosher Restaurant on 48th btw. 5+6th the other day and saw this outside their door:
Sure, they weren’t gigantic, and the guy selling them was some Jewish kid who was probably not a hippie. But they had the little packets of duck sauce, and for only $1- I had to get one.
The inside of the egg roll, links to Midtown stuff you definitely want to know about and the a preview of next week’s reviews- after the jump…
I was walking to work the other day and got handed a menu for the 
Now, I will admit that “The Floater” is an unfortunate name. While it may be an Australian term for a pie covered in soup- it has come to mean something far grosser in our frat boyish American culture. (As a matter of fact, when I told one of my co-workers what I had eaten for lunch… he joked that it was also what I “would be making in a few hours”) But you can’t blame these guys… they’re Australian! And it’s still a catchy name, even though the heavy pie doesn’t really float in Madeleine’s hearty pea soup.
What can I say about this place that hasn’t already been said… Margon is a Midtown institution. When I started this blog (and wrote about Margon neighbors 
I put the “Cuban” in quotes because even though the sign outside says “Cuban”, it’s actually more Dominican. The first giveaway is the poster of the Juan Pablo Duarte in the back (one of the founders of the Dominican Republic)… but the real proof is in the Cuban Sandwich. A delicious pressed sandwich of pork, ham, cheese, mustard and pickles- the Margon version also has salami, a strictly Dominican preparation. While some complain that it’s not authentic, it is no less delicious!
Name: Liz
Everybody in Midtown has a goto lunch, and although I try to eat at new places every week, my wife and I usually fall back on Cafe Duke. Last week, we hit up Cafe Duke for a quick lunch, and I decided to forgo my usual Bi Bim Bap in favor of a few things from the buffet by the lb. I don’t normally do the whole by the lb. thing, because although I love the variety, I can’t stand feeling the need to hold back. Scooping tiny portions, all the time worrying that my lunch is going to end up costing $17. While loading up with my normal items, something amazing stood out to me. They had these amazing looking Jumbo Shrimp that had me wondering “How they hell can they afford to serve Jumbo Shrimp for $7 a lb.????”
I guess that’s why I wasn’t surprised about the shrimp. Can you imagine if the Jumbo shrimp were real? For $6.99 a lb? Hoards of fat guys (like me) would be crowded around the buffet, loading up on jumbo shrimp… trying to “beat the game”. Thankfully, the fake shrimp were delicious so I wasn’t too upset about being duped. I’m not sure exactly what they are made of, but I’m guessing it is a rice cake type of mixture (or imitation crab meat… although it didn’t have that fake fishy flavor that imitation crab has). The best part about the scam… the “shrimp” are not only colored and shaped to look like shrimp, they even have the indentation where the tail was pulled off. Such detail. It’s like art.
There are a lot of reasons I choose to write about a place. Being “Cheap” is a given… but other than that the first, and most obvious is the food. A lot of the places I write about do something interesting- something that isn’t available everywhere. Whether it’s the Indian Burritos at 
I very very rarely write about fast food- so the next question is obvious… Why the hell would you write about KFC??? Well the answer depends on who’s asking. If you haven’t heard yet, New York City is considering 
I love burritos, and have often lamented about the fact that there is not a good one in Midtown (
A few months ago I discovered the world of Midtown “Taco” Carts when I ate at the 
Name: Chris
Here we go again. I love the buffets… and on Friday I visited another one (with my wife and a few of her co-workers). I had actually been to this buffet back in March for my brother’s birthday- when it was known as Minado. We went for dinner, and it was pretty good. Decent sushi, some good hot things, not too crowded- but things were still fresh, and a huge selection. A couple of months later, I had read that it was sold to Todai, a Japanese buffet chain with locations mostly in the west coast, Texas, Illinois, Virginia & New York. My one previous visit to a Todai (in Los Angeles) left me with a bad taste in my mouth (literally). The rice they used to make the sushi was disgusting, and the warm food was not so great either.
With that in mind, we went to the New York Todai, hoping that some of the Minado goodness was held over in the transition. Todai is what is known by buffet aficionados as a “Super Buffet”. It’s a very technical term, and might be difficult to understand for the buffet lay-person. “Super” refers to the awesome size and nature of the buffet in question. Most Super Buffets have many stations, and at least 50 items (I just made that up… I don’t think there is any real measure). 