4:00pm baked goods

As architects we get our fair share of product reps stopping by to show us the latest catalog, furniture line or building material. But today Lisa from Cassina far surpassed all those who have proceeded her. Along with a pile of new brochures and catalogs, Lisa brought us an entire box filled with baked goodies from Grandaisy. That is just thoughtfulness beyond compare, and a very lovely treat for a Friday afternoon.
Grandaisy Bakery, 73 Sullivan Street btwn Grand and Broome

Xe Lữa

A nice alternative to the often over-sauced Chinese-American beef with broccoli dishes is the bò lúc lắc over rice as served up by Vietnamese restaurant, Xe Lữa. They've added some bits of red and green peppers into the mixture, making it a very nice and a not too heavy lunch. For $6 it's not an uber cheap Chinatown lunch but still qualifies for a pretty good deal.
Xe Lữa, 86 Mulberry Street below Canal

4:00pm strawberry tart

The strawberry tarts at Ceci-Cela this afternoon were strangely overladen, almost pornographic in their strawberry-ness.
Ceci-Cela Patisserie, 55 Spring Street near Lafayette

Dragon Gate, with Danny

It's been ages since we've had lunch with Iridesco but Danny was around today so we popped over to Dragon Gate for a catching-up meal. We have memories of tasty rice casseroles but the winning dish today was the steamed fish. Almost every table ordered it and although a slight communication hiccup brought us salmon instead of the more ubiquitous white fish, the dish was pretty damn good. At lunch special prices, well worth ordering again and again.
Dragon Gate Restaurant, 96 Elizabeth Street below Grand

4:00pm raspberry baked pie

Since when did "winter storm warning" mean slushy snow wiped clean by midday rain?
Grand Central Market, 87 East 42nd Street at Grand Central Station

Grand Central Market

The Grand Central Market in no way compares to the Reading Terminal Market but for $10.92 we made ourselves two reasonably decent sandwiches:
$3.12 - 1/4 lb roasted pork loin from Murray's Real Salami
$3.00 - 2 sandwich baguettes from Corrado Bread & Pastry
$4.80 - 1 pint size container of marinated artichoke hearts from Ceriello Fine Foods
The sandwiches were missing something - roasted pork loin really needs some sort of mayonnaise or aioli accompaniment, but still not too bad of a lunch for $5.46 a person.
Grand Central Market, 87 East 42nd Street at Grand Central Station
P.S. Damnit. I really have to read more Midtown Lunch suggestions before I ever think to buy anything lunch related in midtown.

4:00pm oreo cheesecake

The longer I waited at Eileen's to place my intended order of "two oatmeal raisin cookies please" the more the oreo cheesecake kept calling my name. "Pick me! Pick me! I'm so delicious! Please! I promise I'll be very tasty". Happily the oreo cheesecake neither disappointed nor lied.
Eileen's Cheesecake, 17 Cleveland Place at Kenmare

La Nueva Conquista

It's going to be a week of cheaper lunches since we've been a little indulgent the past several days... but fortunately for us no taste is lost in cheapness. And who needs to sacrifice taste when you have value priced options like La Nueva Conquista around the corner? We share an enormous platter of roast pork, plantains and slightly pickled raw onions over a massive quantity of white rice and black beans. And we're stuffed.
La Nueva Conquista, 236 Lafayette Street above Spring

4:00pm cherry turnover

While running work errands this morning, a cherry turnover was picked up from the lovely and homey east village bakery, Something Sweet. The pie filling was a bit too cornstarchy and from the can-like, but if you get a chance, try out their impressive lemon tart.
Something Sweet, 177 1st Avenue at 11th Street

Prune, with Sayuri

Facebook is an amazing tool to re-connect with old friends and discover they live/work within proximity! We figured that some 20+ years (ugh) has passed since we last saw each other, when we could be found pulling silly pranks, acting all badass. Now all grown up, we meet over a civilized lunch at Prune. Sayuri and I both order the Pasta Kercheif, with poached egg, ham and pineuts over a rich sweet browned butter sauce, which was mopped up clean with a hunk of bread. My usual lunching half is away celebrating Tet today, and eating this.
Prune, 42 East 1st Street btwn 2nd and 1st Aves

4:00pm apple fruit pie

Apple fruit pie from earlier.
Cafe Select, 212 Lafayette Street at Kenmare

Cafe Select, with Liz and Peter

Time for our bi-annual lunch with Liz and Peter where we reflect on the current state of our industry (dismal!) over a tasty table with much laughter and some snarky remarks (fun!). It's true the portions are on the small size so we easily finish off our plates, followed up by two desserts. Today we tried the elbow pasta and meat sauce in which the simplicity of the dish does not detract from its wholesome goodness. It's plain, it's straightforward and it's satisfying.
Cafe Select, 212 Lafayette Street at Kenmare

Eleven Madison Park

It's Restaurant Week so we bring you a two part meal in three acts from Eleven Madison Park. The strength of Danny Meyer's restaurant empire lies in his ability to provide a thoroughly consistent experience and quality of food, no matter the setting. There is no wild invention or crazy originality at Eleven Madison but everything we had was perfectly delicious. We licked up every morsel of the octopus fennel and frisee salad, and thoroughly enjoyed the fried sweetbreads in a parsnip soup. Even the grapefruit sorbet was particularly adorable. But the pleasure in eating at Eleven Madison lies in more than just the food, it's the attention to every aspect of the dining experience. For instance we could have finished the entire serving of butter with endless helpings of the sublime crusty French baguette rolls. Or lounged in the lofty dining room over the excellent coffee. Or stayed all afternoon reminiscing about the lovely meal we just had.
Eleven Madison Park, 11 Madison at 24th St

4:00pm lemon tea cake

Continuing on with pleasant surprises from Yura is their lemon tea cake. Particularly nice is the tartness of the lemon.
Yura on Madison, 1292 Madison Avenue at 92nd St

Red Egg, with Ray

3 is the perfect number for dim sum, because as everyone knows 4 is an unlucky number and when you're 3 the variety of dishes falls in the 6-7 plate range, which makes for a very satisfying for lunch. Especially when you have a coupon for 15% off. So old school, coupons. But hey it's austerity times!
Red Egg, 202 Centre Street above Hester

4:00pm angel food cake

In honor of today's events we really wanted to get our hands on something more festive like these Obama decorated layer cakes but alas we share with you instead some very sugary sweet angel food cake from Yura's. C0uld have used something tart to offset the sweetness. Like strawberries.
Yura on Madison, 1292 Madison Avenue at 92nd St

Yura on Madison

On our way out of an Upper East Side meeting we stopped by Yura on Madison for some surprisingly delicious sandwiches. It's always hard to tell with cafe-style bakeries selling a wide array of hot foods, sandwiches, salads and pastries because you can never be too sure about quality. In anticipation of spending the next hour at McNally Jackson watching historical events unfold, we picked up three mini sandwiches: roast beef with (yum!) fried onions, tuna salad and a ham and cheese. And what a lovely ending to a moving inauguration viewing. Giddy from listening to our 44th president speak, the sandwiches were the perfect contribution to today's general sense of optimism.
Yura on Madison, 1292 Madison Avenue at 92nd St

4:00pm cookies

It's not so easy to tell if cookies will be good or not so lucky for you we tasted these today from Tamarind Tea Room. They're nice. If you're walking by and have a sweet tooth craving, pick up the ones with jam centers.
Tamarind Tea Room, 43 East 22nd Street btwn Park and Broadway

Tamarind Tea Room

Every fancy restaurant should have a cafe/tearoom offshoot, it's a brilliant idea! Especially when an afternoon meeting near Gramercy Park led us to the Tamarind's Tea Room, where we picked up the saag paneer and lamb sholley sandwiches to go. Wraps had their heyday and we generally refrain from ordering them, but mostly because you can never be sure that the wrap itself will be good. Luckily we didn't know that a "sandwich" at Tamarind actually meant "wrap". Even more luckily the wraps were actually paratha bread, neatly containing some pretty tasty ingredients.
Tamarind Tea Room, 43 East 22nd Street btwn Park and Broadway

4:00pm walnut cake with coffee frosting

Pricey and fattening on its own but when split 3 ways this generous slice of walnut cake with coffee frosting provided enough of a sugar rush that it required actual coffee to counterbalance the sweet, sweet cream.
Balthazar Bakery, 80 Spring Street near Crosby

Li Hua

For wintery cold days look no further than Korean jjigae (stews) and hot stone bibimbap (mixed rice) dishes where the hot stone bowl keeps contents piping hot until the very last bite. An extremely wonderful thing when the air outside is oh so nippy.
Li Hua, 171 Grand Street at Baxter

4:00pm munchkins

Tumbling round and round,
munchkins will certainly
add on the pounds
unless you eat them one
and then
one
and then one
and then
stop.
Dunkin Donuts, 42 Mulberry Street below Bayard

Ajisen Ramen

Craving, craving, craving hot food today. Found it in a bowl of ramen at Ajisen Ramen, even though Japanese ramen made by Chinese can never be as good as Japanese ramen made by the Japanese. Or maybe it can, it's just not here.
Ajisen Ramen, 14 Mott Street near Bowery

4:00pm peanut butter cup

One last bit of goodness from last Friday's trip to Philly.
Reading Terminal Market

Saha Thai

Neither overly sweet nor too greasy, Saha Thai is rapidly becoming our go-to for quickie lunches. Especially since the lunch selection covers basically whatever you want - chicken, pork, beef, tofu, noodles, rice, vegetables or soup.
Saha Thai, 227 Centre Street above Grand

4:00pm coffee cake

Another delicious recipe from one of our favorite mags, Cook's Illustrated. Painstakingly detailed with many individual steps, the resulting coffee cake is extremely professional, both in appearance and taste. If architecture ever fails us, we could sell coffee cake instead.
Cook's Illustrated, homemade

Bar 89

We have found Bar 89's forte - the BLT sandwich. A proper proportion of mayonnaise to tomato combined with thick cut bacon make this a sandwich worth going back for. It bodes well for the other club sandwiches we noticed on the menu.
Bar 89, 89 Mercer Street btwn Broome and Spring

4:00pm afternoon treats

More tastinesses from our Reading Terminal Market visit on Friday.

Reading Terminal Market

After reading the Ulterior Epicure's treatise on the Reading Terminal Market in downtown Philly, we were giddy with anticipation that our meeting with the RDA would place us within footsteps of the very place included on his 2008 Best of Show list! It might be a tourist trap at other times but at lunchtime the place is packed with office workers and locals lining up for some delicious eats. We joined them, eager to try the pulled pork with greens from DiNic's and the Italian hoagie from Salumeria. It's true that good sandwiches can be found in NYC but man can those Pennsylvannians make a good hoagie! We could have stayed all day sampling wares. As it is, we left wearing huge grins lasting well into the early evening.
Reading Terminal Market, 51 North 12th Street, Philadelphia, PA

Reading Terminal Market

We're here! Live from Philly. More commentary and better photos to come.

4:00pm vanilla cupcake

It's really nice that the desserts at Oro Bakery seem to be getting better and better.
Oro Bakery, 375 Broome Street btwn Mulberry and Mott

Epistrophy Cafe

The nicest thing about lunch at Epistrophy today was that the two pasta dishes (gnocchetti in the foreground with orecchiette in the back) we ordered were color coordinated with the plates. So lovely, no?
Epistrophy Cafe, 200 Mott Street btwn Kenmare and Spring

4:00pm banana bread

Pre-packaged banana bread from the deli or sandwich shop down the street can be a crapshoot but Pret a Manger couldn't do us wrong, could they? NO THEY COULD NOT. Our faith in their goodness is sustained with this very tasty cream cheese frosting slathered thickly over a hefty slice of banana bread.
Pret a Manger, 11 West 42nd Street btwn Fifth and Sixth

Pret a Manger

It's fortunate one of us had an appointment in midtown earlier today because hiding out in the office with fresh sandwiches from our favorite midtown chain, Pret a Manger, was the perfect lunch on this wet and cold day. In addition to the usual roast beef, parmesean and arugula we also tried the chicken and avocado - a rousing success.
Pret a Manger, 11 West 42nd Street btwn Fifth and Sixth

4:00pm chocolate chip creamwich

We have tried the chocolate creamwich and the oatmeal one, but after today's chocolate chip creamwich, we agree that the chocolate chip one is the best. It could be today's batch just happened to be more crunchy than usual but the crispy cookie layers were a great counterpart to the thin layer of oreo style cream.
'wichcraft, 568 Broadway but really at Prince and Crosby

'wichcraft

We usually avoid sitting upstairs at the Equinox affiliated 'wichcraft seating area because it's a little strange to be eating lunch in a gym setting but we were feeling adventurous today. And good thing because the small seating area is actually rather nice and separate enough from any sight lines to the gym that there's no reason to wait until summer time for some of Tom's yummy sandwich concoctions.
'wichcraft, 568 Broadway at Crosby and Prince

4:00pm pear tart

Does someone know what's going on? Kathy saw him yesterday, I saw him this morning and despite this announcement and this confirmation there is no mistaking that Claude is still a very visible presence at Claude's Patisserie. Is he just temporarily hanging out? Is he back for good? Was retirement too boring? Can we count on Claude's once more? Inquiring minds want to know.
Claude's Patisserie, 187 West 4th Street btwn 6th and 7th Aves

Halal Cart on Spring

A messy and delicious start to a new year of lunching! We took a short walk to try the halal cart on Spring just east of Broadway on the north side. Success - it's infinitely better than the Houston St one and nicer than the Spring and Lafayette one. We're still looking for the best street food down here (besides the obvious Calexico) so if you know any good ones, most definitely let us know! In the meantime we'll be ordering from Spring and Broadway when cheap street food cravings hit.
Halal Food Cart, on Spring Street east of Broadway