Gray and Grizzled Food Fan

A Day of Fast-ish Food: Don’t be a sad and skinny food prude. Sometimes it’s the chains that set you free!

1) 11:30 AM Carnitas taco: Beat the lunch crowd by arriving at 11:30 for a pulled pork taco. The meat is from Niman Ranch and far exceeds fast-ish food expectations. Most flavorful fare at Chipotle and customers know it. Chipotle’s Niman order is so big that they forced Mario Batali (I’ve heard him say) to find new suppliers for pork shoulder. Skip the Mexican sour cream, unless you have time for a mid-day fat stroke. Stick with a bit of white cheese and tomatillo-green chile sauce.

2) 1 PM Mr. Pibb and Lemon: The perfect early afternoon beverage break. No worse for you than Starbucks and you can chew on ice while staring at your computer monitor. Plus Pibb Extra sounds vaguely athletic.

3) 2:30 PM Taco tasting: Order one each of chicken, beef and beef (barbacoa and steak). Triple down with a trio of salsas (boring, tomatillo green and tomatillo red). This is fast-ish food at its best. Throw in a complimentary water to wash it down and add some lemon and lime slices for a house-made homage to Lymon (or if you’re shameless, pour a bit of Sprite while pretending to hold down the water button).

4) 5 PM Salty chips and Sol: Use Chipotle for an abbreviated happpy hour. The beer selection includes Bohemia, Tecate, Sol and Negra Modelo, and the chips are cheap. Add some house-made tomatillo red sauce and a few squeezes of lime juice and linger if time permits.

5) 9:30 PM Salad and Margarita: It’s Friday and you’ll be at work ’til dawn. Don’t worry, no fat-induced night sweats if you keep it light for the night feeding. This is the culinary equivalent of the disco nap. You’ll mellow out a bit about a wasted weekend and feel virtuous enough about the salad to forget you haven’t exercised in days, unless you count chair swivel contests. Granted, best not to drink at your desk, so enjoy the hipper than expected soundtrack while eating on the lower level, then head back to the salt mines.

This entry was posted on January 12, 2007 at 4:39 am and is filed under Midtown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.