Day 10: RAMEN!

I love ramen noodles, and Japanese food is great. Ramen from a ramen shop is totally different from the instant stuff we ate in college. I went to Terakawa Ramen near my office, but seeing as how it is the middle of summer I went for the Katsu chicken. Katsu Chicken is panko fried chicken cutlet over rice with a Japanese style curry sauce. It is still pretty rich, but I just didn’t want to eat a huge bowl of soup.

Day 9: Hill Country

 

Today is Wednesday, better known as SeamlessWeb day. I ordered from a barbecue spot called Hill Country. Barbecue in New York is never better than average, more like a Disney version of barbecue, than the real stuff from the south. I had a shredded beef sandwich and sweet tea. The sandwich was nice and the sauce was passable, but the tea was at the bottom end of drinkable.

 

Being a southerner, I am somewhat of an expert in sweet tea. I have thrown out more than my fair share of undrinkable swill marketed as sweet tea here in New York. This stuff passed the test, but barely. It did come in a mason jar that I got to keep, but when a comment about the glass it came in is the nicest thing you can say about a drink, you know it can’t be a good sign.

Day 8: Blimpie's

In the battle versus subway and Blimpies, I like Blimpie’s a little better. I picked up a turkey on white with tomatoes, lettuce and, onions plus mayonnaise and vinegar. There isn’t much to say about it, just a fast food sub.

Day 7: Sichuan Gourmet

Sichuan Gourmet on 39^th Street is perhaps the best Chinese Restaurant in New York, and definitely one of the most accessible to the western palate while staying true to their Sichuan roots. Usually when I go there I order the MaPo Tofu, but I wasn’t in the mood for something quite so spicy, so I ordered the shredded chicken in spicy garlic sauce. This was amazing, chicken with garlic sauce is one of my go to dishes at Chinese restaurants, but people always ruin it with carrots or green peppers, and using button mushrooms instead of the wonderful black fungus, but at Sichuan Gourmet, it was spicy and didn’t really include any inauthentic veggies.  

 

 

Days 5 & 6: The Weekend

Nothing much to say, Saturday I had lunch at shul, consisting of tuna fish and pita chips (that’s why I hate eating there), and Sunday was deli sandwiches with my grandfathers widow. Weekends are a lunch wasteland, from late starting days to brunch, the weekend conspires to keep you from eating lunch. Why does the weekend hate lunch?

 

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Day 4: Surprises On The Street

There is a massive trend of hipsters dropping out of college buying a delivery van and selling food out the back. Of course since these are d-bag hipsters they cant just sell hot dogs and the savory grilled chicken that makes up the bulk of the street meat in New York City. No, these pretentious idiots instead have to sell cupcakes, and Belgian Waffles, or gourmet schnitzel. Just because I find the proprietors and workers of these trucks to be contemptable, so of them make some really good, if not unreasonably expensive food.

I was strolling near Union Square looking for something interesting to eat, and I came across one of these trucks. The Bistro Truck North African Inspired French street cuisine. It smelled nice, and the menu offered a few interesting choices, so I resigned myself to eat a little street meat. I ordered the Mixed Grill which consisted of Lamb, Beef, Chicken, and 1 Merguez Sausage (lamb and beef). Over all the quality of ingrediants was top notch, and the flavors were great. For food from a truck it was at the top of its game. The bad news is it cost $11, where the same food would cost $5 at a halal cart (though I concede it is not the same quality).

Day 3: Welcome to Sabor Country

I love sandwiches. Such a simple concept, get some bread and put other stuff inside it. When I was a child there was one type of sandwich. It was a couple of slices of bread from a loaf of presliced white or wheat bread with some peanut butter and jelly or turkey and mayo.

Then sometime in the late 80's I became aware of the world outside pb&j. It came in the form of Subway. I know subway is just you run of the mill chain sandwich shop but back then it was a revelation. It was an exotic combination of meats and toppings, the choices seemed endless. ever since those early subway days I have craved the most exotic sandwiches i could find.

This brings me to one of my current favorite sandwiches. It is a traditional Mexican sandwich called a Torta. I know most people have never heard of the Torta and think Mexican food is only Tacos and Burritos. But those people are wrong (and possibly racist).

Tortas are a full flavored punch to the gut with all the fantastic flavors from south of the border along with the homey comfort only a sandwich can deliver. To start you need a special kind of bread called Bollilo (like a soft baguette) that is grilled and pressed flat, you can fill it with anything you might find in a taco (not the Sloppy Joe-esque tacos from Taco Bell), my favorite meat for this preparation is chicken or grilled and chopped cow tongue, but you can also put a schnitzel in. Then come the things that make this sandwich truly great there are sliced tomatoes, lots of shredded lettuce, canned jalapenos, a thin kind of guacamole sauce, refried beans (though I usually ask them to withhold that item) and a little mayonnaise.

These treats are usually only available in the kind of Mexican restaurants that are patronized mostly by expat Mexicans. It is worth finding those little hole in the wall restaurants, the kind your mom wouldn't want you eating in, because a good torta is a great, filling and usually cheap lunch.

Day 2: Literally the Second best Use For The Intrernet.

Ahh Wednesdays. Wednesdays are a special treat in the middle of the week for me and my coworkers. On Wednesdays our company treats us all to lunch. We are allowed to order from seamlessweb.com. This is an amazing company that has made my life so much better. SeamlessWeb allows you to order from dozens and dozens of restaurants online and pay with a credit card, in fact the only human interaction you have to have is when the surly delivery guy shows up at your home or office demanding you sign the receipt.

I love these guys, the full menus are posted online, and within a few clicks you are all set for a hassle free lunch or dinner. Now one of the wonderful things about New York is our rich culinary variety, and every place delivers. One of the drawbacks is that almost nobody working in the restaurants speaks English well enough to understand you on the phone. so SeamlessWeb is perfect.

I was paralyzed with choice when confronted with the large number of eateries available to me today, but after about a half hour of hemming and hawing I made my choice. Today's special is Shwarma from Olympic Pita.

Olympic Pita is one of those typical New York Kosher restaurants, meaning no matter what the cuisine of the house is, they also offer sushi of dubious quality. Today I steered clear of the sushi and ordered one of my favorite Israeli specialties, Shwarma in Lafah.

The food was pretty good, but there was one complaint, the distribution of toppings in the Lafah was all skewed. For all you heathens who have no idea what a Shwarma Lafah is, it is basically like a burrito, but instead of a tortilla, they use a gigantic round soft piece of bread (like a cross between Pita and Indian Roti) . Ideally you would like all the fillings lined up evenly all along the length of the burrito, but today's example had all the meat on the top, and all the toppings on the bottom, making for an uneven tasting shwarma experience. Other than that it was a perfectly competent Shwarma.

Day 1: A Bad Way To Start

I love Chinese Food, if I could I would eat it every day. So for the first lunch of my 30 Days of Lunch I chose a Chinese restaurant. Dong Hai (39th St. and 6th Ave.). I have walked by this place a few times, and after reading a positive review online, I thought this would be the perfect kickoff location.

Boy was I wrong. I walked in the door, decor was pleasing, the place looked clean and well decorated, with the usual brusque waitstaff. So far so good, but that's when things went downhill fast. They had the usual 7.95 lunch special with soup and a choice of brown or white rice and an entree. The lunch menu was sparse with only one recognizable choice. Now this isn't some Chinatown locals only kind of place or authentic Sichuan joint, it was straight up American Style Chinese food. It didn't even have General Tso's Chicken.

I ordered Hot and Sour Soup and Kung Pao Chicken. The soup was pretty good, with lots of tofu and black fungus, and it was silky with just the right amount of corn starch, but it was pretty dark, and had too much soy sauce. The worst part was the store bought crispy noodles I like to crunch up in my Hot and Sour soup. frying up wonton skin noodles is so easy, the lack of effort is always disappointing.

about two minutes later (after about one bite of soup) they brought out this day glow orange pile of white meat chicken with two or three peanuts. Everyone knows Kung Pao Chicken should be made with chunks of dark meat, but not here. It was sickly sweet and not even remotely spicy despite all the dried chiles.

It tasted pretty awful, even though the chicken was cooked to just the right texture. Needless to say I will not be returning to this pit of Chinese-esque food.

30 days of lunch

I live and work in New York City. This may be the food Capitol of the
world, There are more than 10,000 restraurants here. Yet every day for
lunch at work I go to 6 or at the most 10 places for lunch, month in
and month out.

Well all that is about to change. This month I will be eating lunch
from a different place everyday. The rules are simple every day I will
eat lunch from a place I have not yet eaten from during June. I can
eat chinese food from a variety of places and that still counts, but
if I go to a chain restraurant I can't go to another location of the
chain (so only one subway sandwhich for June).

Today is the first day June so in an hour or so my challange begins. I
am pretty excited, let's see if this expirement becomes a hassle.

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