Day 89: NEW: A Chickies Substitute in Midtown??

Many readers wrote in to tell me about a new place opening up on 39th street, just off of Broadway, called Schnitzel Glatt Kosher Express (thanks D, Sus, and TorahMike). It just opened last week, so today I went to check it out with my friend Emily. The menu is mostly different flavors of schnitzel, that come on baguettes or wraps (regular or whole wheat), or I think in salads. There are different sauces to go with the chicken, as well as vegetables. What I liked was that they also had different flavors of grilled chicken sandwiches, which makes for a somewhat healthier lunch option. I ordered a teriyaki grilled chicken with BBQ sauce on a whole wheat baguette with pickles and lettuce. Emily ordered the greek chicken in a whole wheat wrap with pesto sauce. They restaurant is small but has a few tables and we had no trouble getting a place to sit. We had to wait a few minutes for the food to be ready, but when it came the portion sizes were definitely substantial. From the first bite, I really liked the flavor of the chicken. It was clearly fresh and had just the right amount of sauce to give a good taste without being overpowering. The whole sandwich was really delicious. Emily enjoyed hers too. The restaurant is a bit far from my office, but they do deliver (call 212 997 7770), and I am eager to try some of the other options on the menu. Readers, if you have been - let me know what you had and if you liked it.

Heads up kids - tomorrow is a Reader's Choice Day on the blog! Check back in the AM to vote for what I should eat for lunch!

Day 88: Honey Do you Love Me? I Love You Honey But I Cant Elope!

If lunch is the meal in between breakfast and dinner, then on Sunday for lunch I had cantaloupe. We had already cut it into cubes the day before, and we stuck the leftovers in a little zip lock bag in the fridge. When I was looking for something to eat when I returned from the park before rushing out to a movie, it was the perfect grab and go “lunch”. The melon itself was not amazing. It was a bit harder than I prefer, and not so sweet. I guess melons aren’t really in season anymore, but we did have a terrific honeydew this weekend.

Day 87: BC 06 Lunch

I had a couple of college friends staying with me for the weekend, so I invited some of our other mutual friends to come over for lunch. We ate a delicious meal of breaded chicken, asparagus, popcorn cauliflower, sesame noodles, salad, and spinach kugel. I thought the sesame noodles that my friend Rebecca made were particularly delicious, though everything was really good. We ate Deena cake for dessert, along with chocolate peanut butter cookies that Michelle made, and some fruit. In the spirit of college, we spent a lot of time during lunch reading some textbooks that I had lying around. We also talked about the upcoming Komen Race For The Cure, in which many of us are participating in order to support breast cancer research, prevention and treatment. You can donate here (just search for the person you want to support). Lunch was a lot of fun and I am almost done washing dishes.

Day 86: Not even Tuna

My lunch plans for Friday got derailed by an extended meeting on Friday morning. I ended up eating breakfast at about noon, and then snacking for lunch instead of eating a real meal. I ate a couple of mini cinnamon raisin bagels that my roommate, Mor, had bought for her niece, and then given to me. Free food tastes awesome. :) I had planned on making mini tuna sandwiches, but it was just a weird food day so I never got around to it.

Day 85: Two More Kosher Lunch Options in Midtown Manhattan!

Exciting news on the NYC Kosher scene. My roommate, Tzip, tipped me off to a new lunch place called New York Lunchbox, on 36th between 7th and 8th. I went today, but they aren't open quite yet - it seems like the grand opening is in a week or two. It looks nice and the menu includes paninis, wraps, salads, sushi, a Hot Buffet (pay by the lb - includes pastas, fish, veges and a LunchBox Quiche - yum!!). They also list Creamy Butternut & Sweet Potato Soup as a DAILY option. I can't wait to try it! Since they weren't open yet, I walked a couple blocks north to the Vegetable Garden on 38th. The menu there is pretty much the same as all these other places - pizza, salads, sushi, wraps etc. I ordered a matzah ball soup and half of an egg salad wrap. The staff was VERY friendly and accommodating and made my wrap exactly like I wanted it (whole wheat, lettuce, cucumbers, pepper, no other veges). It was especially nice of them because they were stuck with the other half of my somewhat odd wrap, and had to hope someone would buy it. Maybe the staff eats those. I don't know. I went back to work and ate the soup first. It consisted of a clear liquid, with several cute looking mini matzah balls, and some tri-colored rigatoni pasta. The broth itself was pretty bland and sort of just tasted like pasta. Luckily I had salt and pepper packets at my desk to spice it up a bit. That made the soup much tastier. The matzah balls were OK but hard to cut into pieces with my plastic spoon. After I finished the soup, I ate my wrap. It tasted good and was very filling. I would definitely order a wrap from them again, but might skip the soup next time.

Have a tip about a new Kosher lunch place in Midtown Manhattan? Email me at rebeccalunch@gmail.com .

Day 84: Ask The Lunch Lady Two

Yesterday I received the following email:

Subject: I have a lunch related question
Message: Hey Rebecca, When you eat your tuna and crackers do you put anything on the tuna?Clearly I read your blog. Shoshana

Hey Shoshana,
Nope, I eat the tuna plain. If I happen to have a mayo packet around, I might use that, but I usually don't.
Rebecca the Lunch Lady

This brings me to today's lunch. One of my friends and loyal blog readers had a baby last week (Congrats Eli!), and since I was going to see her and her kids tonight, I ran over to Borders during lunch to buy some baby and kiddie gifts. I went back to my desk and turned to my trusty lunch-at-desk option: tuna and crackers. As is usual, I ate the tuna straight out of the can with no mayo, mustard or any other flavoring. It's not the most delicious thing in the world, but I don't mind it.

Day 83: Change is Bad

I met my friend Sol for lunch today and he was in the mood for dairy. We considered the mainstream local dairy options and decided to go to Rosas, on the basis of it being close to both of our offices, and it not being Circa, where I have been eating pretty frequently. The thing with Rosas is that a lot of there food looks good, but there is never anything I want to order. They have lots of specialty pizza slices which look kind of appealing and kind of odd. For example, today they had ceasar salad pizza. Anyway, they were advertising individual brick oven pizzas so I figured I could get a personal pie the way I like it, whole wheat, no veges with light sauce. When I asked the pizza man for it to be done that way, with regular mozarella and not fresh mozarella, he was not very pleased by my request. After the pizza was baked, he added fresh basil which is apparently standard for brick oven pizza. But I don't like basil so I started picking it off. The pizza man saw this, and in an unfriendly voice, asked me why I bothered to order his pizza if I wasn't going to eat it the way it was made. I told him that I had never asked for basil. He said that its just the way the pizza comes. I told him that at Circa, they make me pizza the way I like it. He said that if I liked Circa so much I should just eat there. I told him I would be sure to do so in the future. I took my pizza to my seat and ate it. The crust was thin and burnt and not doughy at all. The pizza had a weird flavor. I either don't like brick oven pizza or just don't like the attitude with which it was made, but I did not enjoy my lunch and I will be returning to my regular Circa routine.

Day 82: Happy and Sad

I had a serious pasta craving today which meant I would be calling Circa. I wanted to order my pasta on the website, but they still do not have all of the options that I need available online. Come on, Circa! So I called them up and asked for whole wheat pasta with vodka sauce. I sat and hungrily waited for the food to arrive. Finally the delivery guy came so I went down to meet him in the lobby. I brought the food upstairs to my desk. The bowl was full of delicious pasta. There were no tomato chunks this time, which was a good thing. As I finished the meal I felt an incredible sadness that my food was all gone.

Day 81: American Woman

When I woke up Sunday morning, everyone was lazying around the house and eating brunch. Alex was making himself a bagel, and it looked really good. This inspired me to make myself a bagel sandwich as well. I took a whole wheat bagel (as I had ordered from Deborah in the aforementioned google doc) and had Scott slice it open for me with his machete. (He had already sliced open one finger so I let him handle the giant knife.) I put three pieces of American cheese into the bagel, and then ate it. The American Cheese went well with the Independence and Perseverance flags that Mor and Sol had bought on Friday.

Day 80: Beans, Beans, They’re Good For Your Heart

I was woken midday on Saturday because people wanted to eat lunch. I joined my friends at the dining room table, with a beautiful view of the lake beyond the screened-in porch (thanks AJ!). Scott had baked delicious challah in a few varieties. I liked the kind that tasted like a cinnamon bun the best. He also made whole wheat challah with a jar of honey dumped in, and French bread challah. We then had Deborah’s Shabbos Salad, (lettuce, cucumbers, pepper, pickles, tomatoes, Hearts of Palm, craisins, and croutons) which was delicious as always. We also ate a really good chulent. Somehow, multiple people ended up buying the ingredients that we needed for the chulent, so it all got thrown in together for a random but tasty mix. There were some ingredients that no one could remember buying, so our apologies to whoever’s rooomates bag of chulent stuff we accidentally stole. Shlomo was really upset that the chulent had beans but it all tasted good in the end. We had fruit for dessert, and while we wanted Lisa’s famous pineapple drinks, we could not find the missing Pineapple Juice.

Day 79: BYOFL

I was headed out to the Poconos for the weekend, and in all of our trip planning, spreadsheeting and google doc-ing we had decided that we were going to do BYOFL – Bring Your Own Friday Lunch. My car stopped in Teaneck to pick up Chickies for dinner (YUM!) so I went down the block to Poppies to get a bagel. I ordered an egg and cheese on a whole wheat bagel for me, cream cheese on whole wheat for Mor, and a tuna melt for Sol. Mor and I both really enjoyed our lunches. Egg and cheese sandwiches are one of the best things ever invented. Especially when you eat them when they are hot and melty. Sol’s sandwich ended up thrown into the backseat of the car, where it landed upside down and all over the place so he couldn’t eat it.

Day 78: Grease on Wheels

I had a chance to go back over to my Kosher Street Food stand, Sub on Wheels. The special day was chulent and kishke (doesn’t get more Jewish cuisine-y than that), but I passed and ordered a Philly steak sandwich with lettuce and pickles, no tomatoes. A few minutes and eight dollars later, I was headed back to my office with a piping hot sandwich. I was definitely hungry at this point. At my desk, I opened up the wrapping to find meat and veges overflowing out of the bread. It was definitely a packed sandwich. And I pretty much inhaled it. It tasted OK but wasn’t amazing. The bread was soft this time, but it was soaked in grease from the meat. The whole thing was really oily. The meat was good but not super flavorful. This place seems to serve up your really basic, heimish greasemeat but I’m not sure I’ll be returning all that frequently.

Day 77: Bag o' Pasta

Joyce, Clare and I popped over to a handbag sample sale during lunch today. My friend Abie used to work at the handbag company so he gave me the scoop on the sale. (It's still going on, in case anyone is interested). We browsed for a bit but ultimately did not buy anything. We passed Circa on the way back so I stopped in to pick up lunch. I ordered the whole wheat penne ala vodka. The sauce had chunks of tomatoes in it for the first time. I don't like tomatoes so I did not appreciate this addition and had to eat around them. Otherwise, the pasta was really tasty and filling. I think that I would be remiss to mention Abie and Circa in the same post and not direct my readers to this fabulous clip wherein Abie sings a medley about his love for pizza, Circa broccoli soup and Sabrina the Teenage Witch : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

Day 76: Circa-tastic

I headed over to Circa today to pick up some lunch. When I walked in, one of the managers let me know that they had a vegetable noodle soup, and to warn me that it was very spicy. It was too hot out to eat soup as my meal, so I only asked for a taste. It was pretty good. I definitely tasted the black pepper but it had a nice flavor. I noticed that they were serving the Cantaloupe soup again, but now they are calling it Chilled Cantaloupe soup. Coincidence??? I think not. I ordered a whole wheat pizza with light sauce, to go. While waiting, I chatted with the manager about adding certain options to their website and about their new menu design. When my pizza was ready, I took it out to Greeley Square where I ate and enjoyed. During lunch, I also signed up for the Komen Race for the Cure, to support breast cancer research.

Day 75: Game Plan

When you know you are going to have a delicious and large dinner, it makes sense to lay low lunch time. My friend Avi's wedding was tonight, so I wanted to save room for what would surely be awesome food. I stuck to a small ice cream sandwich and some cherries for lunch. I also snacked on some cheerios. It was filling enough and the cherries were pretty good, considering that it's pretty late in the season. Side note: the wedding did not disappoint. It was definitely the right way to play the day.

Day 74: Bagelicious

After leaving the JCorps event at an Upper West Side old age home, I started walking South to pick up something to eat. I headed over to Bagels and Co, where, surprisingly, I did not see anyone I know. I picked up a whole wheat bagel with lettuce and tuna and took it to go. I then headed towards Central Park, stopping in at the Museum of National History to say hi to my parents, who were there for a tour. I continued on to the Sheep Meadow lawn where I met up with my friend Clare and some of her other friends. There, I sat in the heat, under a big leafy tree, and ate my bagel. I like Bagels and Co because the bagels are large and doughy and they always include a lot of tuna. They are my bagel place of choice on the Upper West Side. Lunch gave me energy for an afternoon of frisbee, badminton, football and One Up One Down.

Day 73:Oscar Meyer Weiner

My friend Elie invited me to join him for lunch at his friend Rachel's. Rachel is new to the neighborhood and is a welcome addition because she cooked up a pretty awesome lunch for us and some other friends including Arielle, Josh and Marc. I had challah and dips, salad, cous-cous salad, brocoli kugel, squash kugel, chicken, and chulent. I particularly enjoyed the squash kugel which I have not had in a while. I brought dessert - chocolate rugelach, mixed berry sorbet, and strawberries (there were also grapes). We spent a lot of time talking about funny names. Rachel and Arielle told us about patients who name their babies heaven (heaven backwards) and lotion. I told everyone how my brother wants all of my siblings to name our babies after awards shows, like Emmy, Tony Grammy, and Oscar. Elie said that we should get married so we could have a baby Oscar Meyer Weiner. I declined.

Day 72: TGIF

Fridays are good bring lunch from home days, or as I told someone earlier, “good bring home from lunch days”. (I think I need to be getting more sleep.) Everything on Friday just seems to have more urgency. If you don’t get things done today, you either ruin your weekend or you’re stuck until Monday. So lunch needs to be efficient. I had to run out on an errand during lunch today, so I brought my trusty and ever efficient crackers and tuna for lunch. I don’t know which flavor of the crackers they were, but they were very tasty. I did a really good job controlling my cracker:tuna proportions today, so I finished off the can and the 2 packs of crackers in the same bite. This has been a very successful lunch day.

Day 71: Soup of the Day

I need to start with a couple of disclaimers. 1 - I rarely like new foods the first time I try them. 2 - I don't really like cold soups. With that said - I decided to order soup from Circa for lunch when I noticed that Thursday's specials included both my favorite soup - sweet potato - and the one I've been curious to try - cantaloupe. Circa's manager had graciously offered to let me try the cantaloupe soup for free so I called them up and ordered them both. The first thing I noticed when the delivery came was that half the bag was half hot and half cold. I should have guessed that the cantaloupe soup would be a chilled soup, but it hadn't occurred to me, and this already made me nervous. First I ate the sweet potato soup, while it was nice and hot. It wasn't the best Circa's ever made, but it was pretty good. The bread dipped inside is particularly delicious. I then opened up the Cantaloupe soup. It was a thick, chunky soup, with some sort of green leafy spice floating around. I cautiously took a spoonful and ate it. It basically tasted like smooshed cantaloupe with a weird spicy afterkick. I did not particularly enjoy that taste. I think my initial reaction was "ew". But, I gave some to one of my coworkers, Kiefer, and she thought it was OK though she did not particularly want to keep eating it. So maybe it's just me, but I think that regular cantaloupe is really good and I would much prefer to eat the melon straight up than the soup.

Day 70: Egg-xactly

Today was the end of the reign of mom-made lunches. I took some crackers, and used them to polish off the leftover egg salad. Egg salad is one of those foods that seems really simple to make but is actually very easy to mess up. My roommate and I have had many adventures trying to make hard boiled eggs and ending up with eggs that aren’t cooked through, or that have egg shell stuck on them, or have some other weird variation that renders them unusable. Anyway, my mother’s egg salad somehow always comes out correctly, and it made for a perfect mid-day lunch break before Tzip, Deb and I took a trip on the lazy river.

Day 69: Ketchup Packets

Today's lunch was another day of mom-cooked goodness. I brought some leftover breaded chicken cutlets to work. I wouldn't call it schnitzel since it was baked and not fried, but otherwise it's the same idea. Good stuff. I like to add some ketchup to my chicken, and for that reason I have some ketchup packets in my desk drawer. I keep packets at work and in my bag for condiment emergencies. For example, 2 weeks ago my sister and I were flying home from Greensboro on a no food flight. That would not have been an issue for the 1 hr 45 min flight, except that we ended up sitting at 3 different airports (surprise stop in Allentown, PA!) and circling over DC for a total of 6 hours. Luckily, we had some plain pasta with us, and a collection of soy sauce, duck sauce and mayo packets. And a plastic cup and 2 popsicle sticks. OK, so in that case the packets didn't really get us anywhere. Anyway, the chicken was really good. If anyone else wants to make fun of my mom's cooking, you can do it in the comments below.

Day 68: Filter Fish

Visiting my parents over the weekend always means one thing: free leftovers. We had tons of food in the house and my mom packed me up with a goodie bag before I returned to the city. Today, I brought some gefilte fish to work. It was already sliced and cut into quarters because that is how my mother served it on Saturday. I really like gefilte fish - it is one of my favorite traditional Jewish foods. I know that it's considered to be a weird food by a lot of people. I once saw someone forced to eat gefilte fish as a challenge on a reality TV show, along with other cultural delicacies like cow stomach. Then again, my friend Joyce told me that there is a similar fried fish ball dish in the Chinese culture, so I guess its not only a Jewish thing. After the fish I ate strawberries and watermelon (leftover from yesterday's BBQ).

Day 67: Rain Rain Go Away

I spent most of midday on Sunday refreshing weather.com on my computer so I did not end up eating until later in the afternoon. Luckily, the thunderstorms that were originally predicted to go on all day did not end up starting until late in the evening, so we were able to trek over to the park with 200 hotdogs, 200 burgers and more corn salad than I have ever seen in my entire life. 36 cans may have been overkill. There is nothing like a good burger fresh off the grill, and I enjoyed a couple of those (and a hotdog too) at the community BBQ. I think I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner's worth.

Day 66: Grandma's Chicken Salad

I spent the begining of this weekend at my parent's house on Long Island with my parents, aunt and uncle, sister, and brother (he has a blog too and its much funnier than this one) . The whole family was home because we were commemorating the deaths of two of my grandparents. This, of course, meant a lot of food. We had some close family friends over for what my mother called "not lunch". This included challah bread, gefilte fish, egg salad, BBQ chicken wings, sliced turkey, chicken cutlets, chulent, potato kugel, pumpkin kugel, cranberry crunch, angel hair pasta, and five different salads. My favorite salad was the terra chip / vege salad so I ate a lot of that, along with lots of chulent and chicken. We also had cake and jello for dessert and even though I was stuffed, there's always room for jello. The food was delicious (good job Mom).

Day 65: Flying Saucers

Today for lunch, I ate an ice cream sandwich. Chocolate ice cream with chocolate cookies on either side. We always called these Flying Saucers growing up, but some of my friends recently informed me that they have no idea what those are. I think Carvel called the ice cream sandwiches Flying Saucers and I always just assumed that it was a general term. I have really fond memories of going to our local Carvel ice cream store after Little League softball games, and ordering a cup of chocolate ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. We would sit outside on these little benches with crushed sprinkles under our feet. Carvel ice cream always had such an awesome swirl. The ice cream I ate today was some super healthy brand so it was probably fake ice cream and fake cookies. It wasn't that good or filling at all and now I am still hungry.

Day 64: I heart NY

Today, I fell in love with NYC. I took a day off from work and decided to go for a bike ride. I rented a bike near my apartment and rode over to the West Side Highway. I figured I would ride South until I got tired (or bored) and then take the subway back uptown to my apartment. Riding right on the river, I had an unabridged view of the Jersey skyline as I passed through beautiful parks and sports fields in Riverside park. I rode past my alma matter, Barnard, past Fairway, past some dog parks. I watched two helicopters take off no more than 20 feet away from me at the VIP heliport in the 30s. I saw lots of really interesting architecture and installation art. The ride had a constant change of scenery and feel, and showed off NYC in a way I have never seen it before. Before I knew it, I was in the financial district, and I was lost and hungry. I called my friend Shlomo B, who works in the area, to find out where I can get some food and the subway. He told me about Cafe 11, a small sushi and sandwich shop in his office building. So I headed over there and Shlomo watched my bike while I went inside to get some food. I ran into basically everyone I know who works downtown, including an old friend from HS, Yehudah, and our friend Josh R. Yehudah and Josh joined me for lunch in the small park across the street from the office building, right by Battery Park. I ate a whole wheat tuna fish wrap. It was pretty good and a very nice size considering a not super high price. We ate and hung out for a bit before I said goodbye to the boys, got back on my bike, and biked back up the 12ish miles to my apartment. The song that was stuck in my head the whole ride was the ever catchy Push It To The Limit.

Day 63: Funny Man

I met my friend Ari for lunch today at Mr. Broadway. Ari is the founder of an organization I am involved in called JCorps, which runs volunteer events for young professionals in NYC and other cities around the world. It has been a while since we touched base, so we wanted to catch up on everything going on with the organization. We both ordered sandwiches (his was Corned Beef and Chopped liver on Rye, mine was Pastrami on whole wheat). I also munched on the half sour pickles. Mr. Broadway always has really good pickles! Ari is a comedian but nothing funny happened during lunch today.

Day 62: Some People

Some people are really good omelette makers. Some people can flip omelettes from one side to the other in a smooth even motion, with no splatter. Some people can add foods like cheese to their omelette without it sticking to the bottom of the pan. I am not one of those people. My half egg half egg white omelette with orange american cheese was kind of a mess. Luckily, the execution of the omelette has no baring on its taste. Cheese omelettes are pretty good. I hope to have another one soon.

Day 61: Another New-ish Option for Kosher Lunch in Midtown!

I was really in the mood for something meat or chicken-y today. Often I order in when I want non-dairy, but since it is so hot and sunny out (what a change) I wanted to take advantage and actually get outside for lunch. So I made plans to meet my friend Emily for our weekly lunch date that doesn't always happen. We decided to check out Baguette Express, a relatively new sandwich place on 37th between 5th and 6th. The place is a tiny hole in the wall with no seating. You walk in and there is a counter in front of you with a brief and basic menu hanging above it. They do sandwiches. That's it. You pick your meat (or schnitzel or falafel), you pick your bread (looked like baguettes, whole wheat baguettes, and pita), you pick some salad toppings (of the Israeli variety - including grilled eggplant, fried onions, Israeli salad, olives, Israeli pickles etc) and some sauces / dressings, and then you take your sandwich and go. Emily ordered falafel in a pita. I had schnitzel on a whole wheat baguette (like that makes it healthy) with hummus, pickles, fried onions and BBQ sauce. We took our lunches out to Broadway and sat on the benches on the new pedestrian walkway. My sandwich was tasty. The BBQ sauce added a particularly good flavor. Of course, this was no Chickies, but for a local lunchtime chicken sandwich, pretty good. I would go back.

Day 60: No Lunch

Today I only ate breakfast and dinner. There is just no way around that. I technically ate breakfast after most people eat lunch, but all I ate were some dry cheerios out of a zip lock bag while sitting in the backseat of my friend Deborah's car. I just can't call that lunch, or even brunch. And then I did not eat again until we had Chickies for dinner. (I LOVE Chickies. It had been way too long). So, no lunch today. Sorry.

Day 59: Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

I spent the early part of the weekend at my friend Devorah's apartment on the Upper West Side. We had a chilled out lunch there with our friends Lisa and Sarah. In addition to the customary wine (Jeunesse, one of my current favorites) and challah (traditional Jewish bread, this time from Zaydies) to start the meal, we ate chicken, roasted cauliflower and roasted squash. Everything was very tasty - props to the chefs. Devorah was very proud that I ate the squash, because I am usually averse to trying new food, and she has prepared it in a way that I had never eaten it before. But it looked good, so I tasted it, and it was. Later, we used the leftover squash to concoct fruit fly traps. These surprisingly provide hours of entertainment and I recommend that you try one yourself some day.