4:00pm oatmeal and pecan?

This ginormous but wafer thin cookie tastes precisely of homemade-ness, which is also why it is so incredibly good. All the things we love in a cookie, some crunch, some chewiness, not too sweet, nuts and rock solid taste.
Happy Memorial Day weekend friends, happy eating!
Village Tart, 86 Kenmare St, NY, NY 10012 (at Mulberry)

Wah Mei, with John

John came over to help us cut some straight and precise lines so we fortified up with the always intensely salty and flavorful chicken leg over rice from Wah Mei. Like most fried chickens, of any nationality, that first bite is the most heavenly.
Wah Mei Fast Food, 190 Hester St, NY, NY 10013 (btwn Baxter & Mulberry)

4:00pm cookies

We're full of halves today, first half bites of mini panini and now cookie halfsies. We share dishes constantly and normally half of something is perfectly reasonable but the trouble arises when something is so tasty, like today's batch of cookies from Eileen's, that you want the whole thing to yourself.
Eileen's Special Cheesecake, 17 Cleveland Pl, NY, NY 10012 (btwn Spring and Kenmare)

Salume, with o

After the recent flurry of press for Salume, we were excited to head over on opening day for some real panini. In order to encompass the full range of the menu, we split 2 orders of the Bella Italia, a tasting plate of 4 mignon panini each. Given normal expectations there should have been a dud in the batch of 8, but no not at all. Each small sandwich was noteworthy, fresh and delightful. Which will make it harder to pick just one the next time we head back. Don't let the long wait times or the crowd downstairs scare you, this is a wait well worth waiting.
Salume, 330 West Broadway, NY, NY 10013 (south of Grand St)

4:00pm chocolates

Our fabulous Monday afternoon intern has finished her last day with us and we will woefully miss her superior organizational skills. Not to mention the fact that she bought us some going-away chocolates.
Dean & DeLuca, 560 Broadway, NY, NY 10012 (at Prince)

Quartino Bottega Organica

Summertime! Fava bean salads and fresh lemonade with raw sugar, perfect for hot, muggy weather days.
Quartino Bottega Organica, 11 Bleecker St, NY, NY 10012 (east of Elizabeth)

Paris Sandwich

We will now share something with you so surprising you might faint. At Paris Sandwich, next to the usual stable of classic Vietnamese banh mi, there is a section called "Euro-Asian" baguettes. Now normally we too would shy away from something so strangely titled. But we are here to tell you that #18, roasted beef baguette, is really really good. It may come out with pork but it doesn't matter. What matters is that the ridiculously absurd combination of Vietnamese marinated and sliced meat with mayo, lettuce, american cheese, tomatoes and onions is uniquely good and worth ordering again. Secreting lunching tip from us to you.
Paris Sandwich, 213 Grand St, NY, NY 10013 (btwn Mott and Elizabeth)

4:00pm red velvet cupcake

Sugar frosting is anathema to our taste buds so any cupcake which changes up the frosting and pairs it with a moist cake has to be good. Precisely why the red velvet cupcake from Sugar Sweet Sunshine is so yum yum. The whipped cream frosting is light and air while the cake is dark and rich. A picture perfect combination if you ask me.
Sugar Sweet Sunshine, 126 Rivington St, NY, NY 10002 (near Essex St)

Baohaus

Baohaus has been on our must-go list since it opened but when Bionic Bites posted these photos and review in April it moved quickly up to the must-go-now list. It's a bit of a walk for us but the lunch itself is so quick and casual the entire adventure took precisely one hour. Well worth the walk, the buns are heavenly bits of deliciousness. Soft buns filled with subtle and interesting flavors and quality meat (or tofu) - you can't really beat that.
Baohaus, 137 Rivington St, NY, NY 10002 (btwn Norfolk and Suffolk)

4:00pm pear juice quick pop

Our office kitchen gets more decked out by the day. Yesterday we received a new popsicle maker called Zoku. The Harvest team are friends with the peeps behind this nifty gadget, and we'd heard the buzz around the office, but I didn't really get what it's all about until I finally saw it. It's really fun! I made my first pop with just pear juice and enjoyed every refreshing bit of it. Check it out.

Once Upon a Tart

Just about lunch time, I really started to crave one of our favorite sandwiches in the neighborhood from Once Upon a Tart, but once we got there, I found myself mysteriously asking for the Goat Cheese with Portabella and Radicchio Sandwich. I like all the ingredients but they don't exactly ignite any excitement as far as sandwich contents go. In fact I kinda worried that I'd regret my decision. But regret I did not. The bitterness of the radicchio overpowered the mushroom, but I didn't mind that one bit. It felt like eating a meatier leaf that complemented the rest of the sandwich. A few toasted pine nuts could add a nice lil somethin' somethin'.
Once Upon a Tart, 135 Sullivan Street, NY, NY 10012

4:00pm banana bread

It really is so nice to have neighborhood bakeries where you know practically anything from the dessert display will be good. That kind of reliability means you can try anything and be assured they will delight.
Village Tart, 86 Kenmare St, NY, NY 10012 (at Mulberry)

Bread

Usually Bread's lunch special, 1/2 sandwich and bowl of tomato soup, is too tempting to pass up but I was strangely in the mood for an arugula salad today. Which, I was pleased to discover, Bread does quite nicely. The dressing is super tart but perfect in contrast to the slight bitterness of arugula, with a heaping mound of parmesan providing a bit of saltiness.
Bread, 20 Spring St, NY, NY 10012 (btwn Elizabeth & Mott)

4:00pm sponge cake

Do not let the photo deceive you, it may appear this is a dry piece of bread torn in half but actually it's a soft and squishy piece of sweet and cheap spongecake.
Manna House Bakery, 125 Mott St, NY, NY 10013 (btwn Grand and Hester)

Nyonya

Nyonya is where we go for reliable comfort foods like young chow fried rice or beef chow fun but it's so much more than comfort. Their roti canai is yum yum, the house special crabs rivals that of Fatty Crab and today we saw a very tempting wonton mee at the next table over. And it's nice to see that the new fancier digs has resulted in larger crowds but no change in the food.
Nyonya, 199 Grand St, NY, NY 10013 (btwn Mulberry and Mott)

4:00pm birthday cake

Cupcake Cafe seriously has to be one of the more underrated bakeries as it seems like only long time New Yorkers know of its heavenly delights. And they are oh so heavenly, possibly our favorite cupcakes hands down. Which is why a birthday cake from Cupcake Cafe is just about the most perfect birthday treat I can imagine.
Cupcake Cafe, 18 West 18th St., NY, NY 10011 (btwn 5th and 6th Aves)

Balthazar, with Rich

I really love what the NY Times food critic, Sam Sifton, said of Keith McNally recently: The restaurant is a vision of Manhattan that, like all of Mr. McNally’s projects, is at once entirely fake and entirely accurate. Restaurant dressed as theater dressed as nostalgia, is how the novelist Richard Price put it, in “Lush Life.” You gotta give him credit, the guy really knows what people want and he knows how to deliver it. We rarely have lunch at Balthazar because it's always too crowded and we're too lazy to think ahead and make reservations. But on a lark today we walked in at that perfect moment when a table opened up so that we could sit and have a lunch of french salads.
Balthazar, 80 Spring St, NY, NY 10012 (at Crosby)

4:00pm strawberry rhubarb pie

We have been receiving seasonal fruit deliveries from Basis every week and his past weekend some rhubarb made its way home to Kristina who sent Patrick back to the office with a big serving of strawberry rhubarb pie. Nothing quite so nice as a lovingly made homemade pie at the start of rhubarb season.

Red Egg, with the ladies

In one of those increasingly common city moments, we discovered that Mimi, whom we met as part of the Quarantine Studio, went to school with Shirley whom I had met earlier last year at CDS. Along with Rosemary, another old classmate of theirs, we met for an early lunch of dim sum at Red Egg. Everyone has dim sum favorites but no one had tried these steamed rice rolls with cilantro before. Unusual, but tasty.
Red Egg, 202 Centre Street, NY, NY 10013 (btwn Hester and Howard)

Pod Bandera

We stumbled out of the charming and picturesque Old Town of Gdnask, through one of their numerous arched gates onto a touristy spot right on the canal. We were too hungry to walk any further and so resigned ourselves to a menu scattered with English translations. Regardless we did manage to enjoy a lunch of some typical Polish dishes, sausages, potato pancakes and dumpling soup.
Pod Bandera, ul. Dlugie Pobrzeze 23, 80888 Gdansk

4:00pm donuts

It's a sad afternoon for us, we just got in this afternoon from Gdansk, all eager to get our daily fix of the most delicious donut ever only to be devastatingly reminded of the European way of life. Bakeries wake up early on Saturday and close by 2pm. Alas too late for us. Instead we will have to live with only our memories and these photos. Next time Berlin!
Konditorei Krautzig, Schonhauser Alle 126, 10437 Berlin

Schlemmerbuffet

Most cities have some large immigrant population and usually that immigrant population has managed to make culinary inroads into the local eating scene. In Berlin's case, it's the Turkish who add foodie flavor, in that well known form, the donar kebab. We found it at Schlemmerbuffet in Rosenthaler Platz and oh my, quite worth the detour. The lamb was sliced thin and in small pieces, grilled to delight. Add white sauce, red cabbage, onions, lettuce, tomatoes and their own bread baked one counter over, you can easily see why it's a favorite not only with taxi drivers but everyone else who wanders by. A must eat!
Torstrasse 125, 10119 Berlin

Kaffee am Meer

Our timing is a bit off for lunch so posting this week might be a bit random and sporadic. As in this late afternoon snack in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin at a cafe called the Kaffee Am Meer. We didn't recognize too much on the menu except brot (bread) and butter (butter) so that's what we ordered and out came these 3 slices of German dark bread covered in a delectable thick layer of butter. Perfect with an afternoon kaffee (coffee).
Kaffee Am Meer, Bergmann Strasse 95, 10961 Berlin

4:00pm ich bin ein Berliner

In reality Berliners call donuts pfannkuchen and not berliner as made famous in JFK's 1961 speech. We don't really care what it's called as long as we get our hands on some and this afternoon we found, by chance of location, the most perfect and delicious jam filled donut. We had stopped by this bakery with the long name of Konditorei Krautzig, picked up a donut and tucked it in our bag for later. Later that afternoon we ate it and deeply regretted not buying two. There is always tomorrow.
Konditorei Krautzig, Schonhauser Alle 126, 10437 Berlin

from Berlin

This morning we are waking up on Danziger Strasse in the Prenzlauer neighborhood of northeastern Berlin. It's already noon here so a little morning lunch for you of our favorite Eastern European breakfast options: yogurt with museli, rhubarb and strawberry jam, a selection of cold cuts, grain bread and butter. Today we hope to find some doner kebab and hopefully donuts as well.

Saha Thai, with Rich

It's Fish Friday and we still haven't found the fish special that captivated our attention all those weeks ago. I could have sworn it would have been the Pla Rard Prik but it's not. Oh well, there are only a total of 5 or 6 fish specials and we have many more Fridays to try them all. Today we're off on our travels so no dessert post this afternoon but hopefully some German and Polish lunches next week. Happy weekend!
Saha Thai, 227 Centre St, NY, NY 10013 (above Grand)

4:00pm pear tart

Some wrapping up of things today and tomorrow as we get ready to travel east towards Poland via Berlin. A week from now we will be in Gdansk for the launching of our Invisible Gate project with the Laznia Gallery. Very exciting times. Any LUNCH readers in Berlin or Gdansk feel free to email us, would love to have lunch abroad!
Grandaisy Bakery, 73 Sullivan St, NY, NY 10012 (btwn Grand and Broome)

Sunrise Mart, with Spencer

It's funny how you can share office space but never really spend significant amounts of time together. Which is why it's really nice to have found a moment for lunch today with Spencer. Especially because he is a wealth of information about an arena of life that doesn't even come close to touching upon ours, despite working within 10 feet of one another. We went to Sunrise Mart for a reliable and quick meal where we were able to satisfy appetites for pork teriyaki, avocado sushi and even jap chae.
Sunrise Mart, 494 Broome St, NY, NY 10012 (btwn West Broadway and Wooster)

4:00pm apple brown betty

Here's a super simple dessert. Chop up apples, toss with some sugar, lemon juice and a pinch of cinnamon. Make the topping by chopping up some white bread, toss with melted butter, brown sugar and regular sugar. Put the apple mixture in a pan, cover with the bread mixture. Bake. Eat hot out of the oven or chilled two days later. Yummy either way.

Pinche Taqueria

Though we had to break our "no repeat within 6 weeks rule", because it's Cinco de Mayo, and because we needed a super quick early-ish lunch, we couldn't but avoid going to Pinche Taqueria to enjoy some of their tasty tacos. The Lafayette location was hopping and festive by 12:10 and we even saw two girls sharing a pitcher of margaritas. The queue made us think twice about eating there but we stuck to our gut (or lack of alternatives), and were fed on time. It could be me, but the tacos were better at their Mott Street location.
Pinche Taqueria, 333 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012 (below Bleecker)

4:00pm vanilla cupcake

There is a crazy setting sun pouring through the western wall of windows in our office. It is slowly making its way from north to south, illuminating swatches of the office in an intense and bright light. It's at our desks now and will probably disappear in about 15 minutes.
Oro Bakery, 375 Broome St, NY, NY 10013 (btwn Mulberry & Mott)

Mangiami

We found a little bit of west Soho on the western edge of the LES today. Small and deserted, Mangiami's didn't much remind me of Pepe Rosso until the pasta came out. We both had the $10 lunch special (who can refuse that) and discovered a wholeheartedly decent flavor and texture to the pasta. Nothing amazing, but nicely reliable - much like our west Soho friend, Pepe Rosso. The differences are a side salad and a plethora of seats to choose from.
Mangiami, 9 Stanton St, NY, NY 10002 (btwn Bowery and Chrystie)

4:00pm vanilla cupcakes

As a non-sweet sweet eater, I always find baking from non-tested sources a total shot in the dark. This weekend I tried a Mark Bittman yellow cake recipe only to discover, 4 trays of cupcakes too late, that his tastes were way too sweet for me. The only dessert recipes which I trust with 100% certainty are ones by Maida Heatter. She never fails me. And M. has been producing some rather remarkable desserts from Cook's Illustrated so I might go there there next time I'm looking for the perfect cupcake recipe.

Office Potluck

The hot and sultry weather over the weekend definitely affected everyone's cooking for Office Potluck today. A summer pasta and bean burrito rounded out an otherwise light and summery table of fresh fruits and chilled soup.