What's for lunch?

I wish Bottino take-out would give out punch cards, because we order from there nearly every day and it would be nice to have a free salad after the 10 or so we order in a week. There seems to be a pattern here – sometimes we're on the Fennel Arugula kick, sometimes we stray and Steven orders the Chef Salad or Heather the Shrimp Orzo and lately it has been the Chicken Dill (the green apples are especially delicious because I think they've been sprinkled with lime juice) for Courtney and I. We are divided on what we think of the sandwiches – love the fillings but some of us fear tearing out our crowns along with each bite of thick, crusty bread. Which is sometimes doused with herbal mayo.

We had a soup debacle last week. Bottino's Lentil Vegetable lacked the hearty portion of lentils and the surface of our soup cups was about an inch deep of soupy oil. Plunge those ladles deep into the soup crock please for all the goody bits! Thank you Bottino for sending us new soup and you know we'll be coming back for more. The following day we tested our luck with the Garden Vegetable at From Earth to You (aka "Muscle Man Cafe") and it basically tasted like, well, warm water. But we do have our standby's at "Muscle Man's", namely the following sandwiches; Chicken Salad, Tuna Salad, Smoked Turkey & Brie (is Peanut Butter & Jelly considered a sandwich or a treat?), and Crab Cake; other staff favorites are the Yogurt Parfait and the cookies. We've noticed that towards the late afternoon, the cookies are just perfectly under baked.

I have a wish list when it comes to delivery options in Chelsea:

• How can we get Grand Sichuan's food to travel better? Personal favorite is the Baby Shrimp with Broccoli, minus the sauce. It still has flavor without that scary sauce.

• Pita Hut – easy on the garlic, please.

• Mexican food. PLEASE! Unfortunately Kitchen/Market has an inconsistent track record, so we've stopped ordering altogether.

• Mexican food. Cal-Mex anyone?

• Could Cabo Rojo have some vegetarian options? I do like the idea of Cabo Rojo, however my waistline does not.

Sometimes we forget that...

Daioh Sushi has great lunch specials (including Saturdays).
Republic will deliver this far west!
Pepe Giallo salads read better on the menu than they taste.
Cafe Fillipe (aka "Cafe Ryan Phillippe") does a good panini.
Everything I order at Spice tastes the same!
From Earth to You has personal pizzas – can you guess who is "Meaty Russ"?

Posted by Monica

Comments

[lucky downtowner]

Unbelievable that decent cheap food is so hard to get in that neighborhood.