Jimmy’s Corner is a dive in the best sense of the word. This narrow, 40-year-old haunt feels like it’s been plucked from Times Square’s seedier past and plunked down on today’s 44th Street where, ignored by tourists, it quietly ministers to a cross-section of locals. History stares back at you from walls cluttered with autographed photos of boxers, and from the tables, covered with snapshots of random folks preserved in amberish laquer. The beers are cheap ($4 pints of Bud Light, Hennekin, or Sam Adams), sports flickers on the TV, and the jukebox cranks out one Stax soul gem after another. I haven’t heard anything that sucks, or was recorded before 1980, from that wonderful device. If you endure this neighborhood as part of your daily grind, and especially if the recent storm of layoffs that are seemingly hitting everyone has you feeling a bit low, Jimmy’s is a cheap, low-key refuge. It’s a good idea to limit your posse to one or two friends, it is quite small.
Jimmy’s Corner in Midtown Lunch. (This review has a good neighborhood lunch tip–at Margon (136 W 46th st.) you can get a decent Cuban sanwhich for $6 or a heaping platter of roast chicken, rice, beans, salad, and fried plantains for about $8. They’re open until 5pm weekdays).
Jimmy’s Corner, 140 W 44th St. between Sixth and Seventh Avenue
Damn you Dessert Truck.
Not only have you infiltrated my evening stomping grounds in the East Village, as well as my work-days in Midtown, but just as I was growing immune to the lure of your chocolate bread pudding you’ve unleashed something even more irresistible.
Like the creamiest of pie fillings topped with toasted marshmallows and crunchy sugar-roasted pecans, this pumpkin custard is the perfect autumn snack. It’s a good thing it’s jacket season too because soon I might need to camouflage my many, many indulgences in this treat.
I promise to shut up about Dessert Truck now.
Dessert Truck - Park Ave and 52nd St. Mon-Fri 12pm-4pm and on Third Ave and St. Mark’s every day 6pm-midnight
Fans of Magnolia Bakery’s famously sweet cupcakes, rejoice. Now you no longer need to schlep downtown for a dose of that toothache-inducing buttercream frosting. Magnolia has just opened an under-the-radar outpost (no signage yet?) on the corner of 49th street and 6th avenue–tourist central and spitting distance from about a million snackish office workers.
There’s a bit more selection here than I remember in the West Village location, and I’ll probably check out the promising-looking cheesecake, cookies, and various other treats when I’m craving something sweet. My peanut butter bar with heath candy bar crumbled on top ($2.50) was a delightful, if intense, post-lunch pick-me-up. But unsurprisingly, all the action here is around the cupcake window. I have to be honest: I never understood what made these cupcakes so damn special, besides the shout-out on Sex in the City, but at least here they are behind a pane of glass. In the downtown location, shoppers graze their coat-sleeves through frosting as they serve themselves in a kind of dog-eat-dog cupcake frenzy. Also, there wasn’t a line out the door in the 49th street spot–not yet, anyway. I think that is what bothered me about Magnolia in the West Village; not that people were eating those cupcakes, but that they would stand in a line wrapped around the block for half an hour in the freezing cold to eat those cupcakes. I was fooled once; I got in the line, thinking there might be something unbelievably delicious hidden under all that pastel frosting; there wasn’t. It was a cupcake, no more, no less. Needless to say, I haven’t recovered from my disappointment.
Magnolia Bakery 1240 Sixth Avenue, at 49th Street
Today Dessert Truck posted this notification on Facebook: “Our daytime spot will be Park Ave between 51st and 53rd Sts. We’ll be somewhere along the two blocks. We’ll be serving our regular menu and will be open from 11:30AM - 4PM. In case we have any parking issues, please bear with us as we work out the kinks for daytime service. If you’re working in the area, do stop by, even just to say hi! Also, if you could let anyone else who works in the area know that we’ll be there, we would really appreciate it.”
If you work in midtown, then you may well know the sad predicament you find yourself in when the clock on your desktop strikes one, you can smell your coworker’s french fries through your cubicle walls, and you’re having trouble focusing on your css/spreadsheet/proposal/whatever through the hunger pains. You really don’t want to go to some packed, over-priced buffet-style mess hall, so you find yourself at Starbucks, washing a stale scone down with a caramelly beverage, feeling fat and unhappy. Well now you can feel fat and happy scarfing down a tasty $5 dessert cup from the truck. I came down kinda hard on Dessert Truck, because of the weird cake-batter texture of their chocolate bread pudding, but after I wrote about it they started adding a few chunks of bread onto the top of each cup, which kinda won me over. I think there is - or used to be - a decent Indian cart serving up $5 plates on 53rd St. near Park Avenue, so you can make a meal of it.
Update 8/17/08: I haven’t seen the Wafel & Dinges guy in his usual spot for over a week; Midtownlunch says the city has put up No Parking signs. I did spot him one day on 44th St. between Sixth and Seventh Avenue, so perhaps a new locale will be announced soon.
Street-fare Belgian waffles have arrived in Midtown! The Wafels & Dinges truck has migrated uptown to 46th street between 5th and 6th avenue, brightening the days of office dwellers with its bright-yellow-truckness. The menu lists both the puffy, breakfast-style Belgian waffles, as well as liege waffles, in both cinnamon or vanilla flavors. I advise on getting your liege waffle ($4) dusted with sugar and calling it a day, but you can upgrade to something called the Waffle of Massive Deliciousness and pile on as many dinges (Belgian slang for toppings) as you like ($7).
The liege waffles were chewy and delicious as they should be, but fell short on the caramelized coating that you get at Le Petit Belge. Still, they were better than those at the lookalike Waffle Truck sighted around Astor Place–photo to the right, for your dossier. And the waffle man was nice, but a bit non-committal about how long they’ll be parked at the new locale. It sounds like something they’re trying out for a bit.
Maybe I’m just wildly susceptible to foodie trends (remember speakeasy cocktails?) but the wave of waffles hitting the city makes me very happy, and I don’t think I’m the only one. Whenever I get on an elevator with a hot liege waffle at least one person looks ready to pounce on it.
Wafles & Dinges Truck, South side of 46th St., between Fifth and Sixth Ave, closer to Sixth.
Around from about 9am-4pm. Check the web site for other locations