Midtown (Plus More) - NYC Cravings Truck

The best food in Midtown is sold in carts and trucks. Don't pay more for less quality and less food at expensive chains and tourist traps in and around Times Square. Since I work near Bryant Park it is difficult to find the good lunch spots for cheap eats with your usual suspects being Chipotle, Metro Cafe and other corporate chains--I consider those two the lesser evils. However, you can find awesome cheap food from street vendors. The apex of said vendors? The NYC Cravings Truck is the holy grail of street vendors.

Serving Tai street food like fried chicken, pork chops, dumplings, zongzi, fish cakes and wings, the Cravings Truck makes a different lunch time stop in Manhattan every day of the week. On Monday's the stop by 48th and 6th where I make my weekly trek to get Thai fried chicken with rice for $7; add a tea egg for another buck.

The chicken is beyond savory and tender, after your first bite the meat will drop off the bone with juices flowing free. An order comes with two nice big haunches served over a bowl of rice with a brown sauce and sour cabbage. The mixture is perfect. Ask for extra sauce for another buck and you will understand why it's the "Cravings" truck. Nothing in Midtown beats the price, the taste or the quality.  I'm dead serious when I say this the best lunch in Midtown.

Try to make it early to the stop or else you'll have to wait in a hefty line which at peak lunch hours can reach down the block. Tourists and white collars often walk by perplexed by the long line for the truck and curious onlookers ask what the big deal is. If a vendors quality is quantified by the length of their line then the cravings truck is at the apex. Best fried chicken, best Midtown option.


Twitter - NYC Cravings.com (Both links have daily locations)

Chopstick Etiquette for you ignorant savages

One they forgot is to never stick your chopsticks vertically into any food--it makes them resemble the incense Japanese families put into food that they place the graves of their ancestors, which as you can imagine, is pretty offensive.

Which are you?

My family is definitely the bottom picture.

Cup and Saucer - Chinatown

You spilled diner in my Chinatown! That's like spilling goat milk in my eggnog. OK, tenuous joke references aside you might be wondering why there's a picture of fries and eggs up there. Well, I don't know. So there.

I used to live a couple blocks from this really small and homey diner, Cup and Saucer, run by Greeks with a very classic old timey diner feel to it. Prices were fairly cheap and it had  a nice no-frills or pretenses vibe to it. So it was very much the opposite aesthetic to something like the nearby Roots and Vines. It's a nice place for breakfast or a burger. The two egg breakfast ($4.45) is great and cheap. You get two eggs made to order with home fries and toast. Good stuff. Breakfast sandwiches are another good option here, basically your standard breakfast stuff, nothing fancy--like a diner should be.  The breakfast sandwiches run around $2-$4.

Oh, so why did I have french fries with my eggs? I didn't realize how late it was (it was almost 2pm) and ordered the two egg breakfast so they were out of home fries at the time.

89 Canal St., New York, NY 10002, 212-925-3298, menu page

 

New York Hot Dog and Coffee - Buy1 Get1

New York Hotdog and Coffee is doing a buy one get one free special after 5pm this week possibly longer. Head over and try out those kimchi and bulgogi hotdogs with a pal or if you're me, just get two for yourself.

LES got soul food?

The spread was so big that we couldn't fit all the food into one shot. Here we are at LES BBQ joint, Georgia's Eastside BBQ, with BBQ wings, fried chicken, ribs, andouille sausage, sweet potato fries, baked beans, corn bread and coleslaw. The waitress was incredulous of our appetite, however we proved our mettle is unwavering and terribly formidable. Of course this was all post-Donut Plant breakfast as well. I bet you think I'm fat, don't you?

Mandoo Bar - Korea Town (Midtown)

Korea Town--I like it because it's Korean, but I generally don't like its Midtown prices so i don't go there as often as I might like. If you know of a cheap, cheap Korean place with solid performance in Manhattan let me know. Mandoo Bar is probably one of the cheapest places in the small area that is Korea Town. They specialize in Korean dumplings, mandoo, and you can spot the storefront because of the chefs making the dumplings by hand in the window.

The name holds no pretenses, the best thing here is the mandoo--pork, kimchi, vegetable--they are all very good and come hot and steamy, fried or steamed. The kimchi mandoo is certainly the star here, the mixture of kimchi and pork do not masque each other and you can easily taste the full flavors of the spicy kimchi and the savory pork, which fold together very nicely under the guise of tender wonton wrappings.

I tried the kimchi noodle soup and the bibimbap, both of which were sub-par for the pricing. Your best bet here is to take Mandoo Bar's name in verbatim. Get the mandoo, get some drinks. So maybe not the best place for a full course meal, but a great place for drinks and one of the best appetizers ever. Hell, if you want to just go order a plethora of dumplings for yourself and make it into a meal--I would commend you for it.

2 West 32nd St., New York, NY 10001, 212 279 3075, menu page

Mei Lei Wah Bakery - Chinatown

I like buns. Best bun for your buck in NYC? Mei Lei Wah's $0.80 for your choice of baked or roasted pork bun. Fast, hot and savory, cheap and slightly sweet bundle of soft bready dough and juicy brown pork meat and fat. It's a simple thing, a thing of beauty.

They've got a plethora of other sorts of buns ranging from your large dinner bun with egg, rice and meat to your dessert buns with sweet filling like sugar and coconut. All options are very cheap around $1-$2. Probably a good morning-after place for when your feeling groggy since it's a coffee and tea place too. Everything's on the cheap though so anytime is a good time to try it out--there is no bad time for cheap.

A bun for everyone! Vegetarian options included. And yes, this place is open--it had closed for a short amount of time and then reopened so sometimes there is some confusion as to whether it exists or not.

64 Bayard St., New York, NY 10013, 212 966 7866, yelp page

Dorado: Some good green in Brookline?

Dorado: Tacos and Cemitas, the new Mexican joint in Brookline looks promising--Mexican food is always promising. I'm a Torta addict so the thought of Cemitas makes me hopeful. There isn't a huge difference by the way, still your basic Mexican sandwich except Cemitas originate from Puebla and have some slight differences like a sesame bun and cilantro along with some other nuances.

Browsing their menu, you can see some pretty fair prices, but the focus here is Eco-friendly. Dorado's Christina Hernandez sent me some specifics on the green tactics Dorado employs:

•       Dining utensils made from potatoes (can withstand temperatures up to 375 degrees)
•       Cups derived from entirely natural corn-based biodegradable material
•       All plastic containers made from 100% renewable resources such as plants
•       To-go bags made from GMO free crops
•       Bagasse plates made from sugarcane
•       Floor made from post-consumer recycled materials
•       Wood tables made from the previous tenant’s walk-in cooler

As someone who is very suspicious of anything claiming to be Eco-Friendly I'll have to check the place out myself the next time I'm in the Boston area. Suspicious? Why? A lot of people with green activism in mind miss the point, but it seems that Dorado's got pretty good aim.

Boston Liquor Licenses or the reason why I'd rather go to a house party in Allston

As an ex-Boston resident of 5 years, I can tell you there aren't many great bars in Boston. Most of them are expensive, crowded with college kids, and if you're not in the mood for a dull sports bar or an expensive high falutin downtown bar or even worse--a club (shudder) then you're out of luck. Especially since I heard the Model and the Silhouette are starting to suck.

I had always told people that the reason why Boston bars' and restaurants' prices and services are more often gruff unfriendly is because of a couple reasons: 1) the influx of discourteous college kids makes restaurant/bar owners hate everyone; and 2) there isn't enough competition among establishments--whereas in a more dense city like New York if you don't like a joint's prices then you can hop to one of 10 places on the same block.

Recently, Boston Magazine's Sean Flanagan sent me an article that elucidates a large part of this problem: apparently the main reason for the aforementioned point #2 is the lack of available liquor licenses. The problem? There's a hard cap on the amount of places in Boston that can serve liquor and so the cost of licenses as the city has grown has skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So maybe you wish there were more cooler independent restaurants and bars in Boston? Well too bad, because mom and pop can't afford to shell out $450,000 for a liquor license while Mr. Corporate Chain has the cash to spare.

Good stuff, Boston. Way to promote that healthy competition we Americans are known for. If you want to know the details you should read the article over at Boston Magazine's site for the complete rundown on the bureaucracy at hand.

p.s. The Other Side doesn't have Brubakers anymore.

Roots and Vines - Lower East Side

This place has a bit too much of a "too cool for school" kind of vibe--I'm not a huge fan of that kind of thing, but the food was pretty good. It's a very nice and clean spot in LES on Grand St. a block from the glorious Donut Plant. Prices are in the middle range ($6-$10) and they have a great selection on their menu: burgers, banh mi and Mexican. Being part coffeehouse, part bar and part street vendor--Roots and Vines is not a banal stop, which probably adds to its trendy mood and decor: soft lighting and a too many rich kids with macbooks sipping lattes. There's probably someone wearing a beret there right this second. But don't let any of that stop you from scarfing some tacos and burgers or even better: a banh mi.

I tried out the banh mi and although it's smaller in size compared to Saigon Bakery in Little Italy, it's still pretty substantial and well prepared. The bread was crisp and toasted to a fine texture, enough to bed crunchy but not so much that it crumbled apart. The inner working were also pieced together nicely with each ingredient segment nicely portioned so that I could taste a bit of patte, pork, pickled carrot and cucumber in each bite. It was delicious, but when I was finished it left me wanting another--so cruel.

Props to the chef who designed their menu. It has all the beautiful types of food I love: banh mi, tacos, burgers and tortas. Sure, none of them are particularly on the "light" side, but for those people that want trick themselves into healthy choices they offer some salads (goat cheese anyone?). I'll definitely return to try out the tortas, the thought of which make my mouth water.

This a very chill spot, so probably a good place to get a coffee or a beer and something to eat with friends where you can have a conversation. I'd take friends here who like a more modern and cleaner looking establishment--maybe the ones aren't as fond of the dives and grimier places.

409 Grand St., New York, NY 10002, 212 260 2363, Menu Page