[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

You'd think good char siu, that glistening red barbecue roast pork, would be easy to find around Chinatown. And you can find it just about everywhere you look, except that most of it is pretty passable. Tough and chewy, syrupy sweet, barely charred or burnt to a crisp—they're all pitfalls down the road to good Chinese roast pork. But Big Wong King gets it pretty right.

For $5.25 you get a generous portion of chopped roast meat over rice, tender with creamy fat and a hint of caramelization around the edges. Ask for it fatty (you should) and you'll actually get it—a rare trust between diner and restaurant worth nourishing in Chinatown.

Big Wong King

67 Mott Street, New York, NY 10013 (map)
212-964-0540

[Photographs: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

There's plenty of great food at Nyonya, the Malaysian restaurant right below our office, but not much of it is vegetarian friendly. Even their vegetable dishes seem to come with salted fish or shrimp paste by default. Your only real options are a poor vegetable platter sold as Malaysian Buddhist ($10.95, has any dish with the word "Buddhist" in the title ever been any good?), and an excellent Mixed Vegetable Curry ($12.95).

At 13 bucks, the curry may seem a little pricey compared to their under-$10 lunch specials, but it's huge—easily big enough to feed two or three with a side of rice. It arrives at your table in a big clay pot, chunks of tender eggplant, broccoli, and cabbage poking up through the rich and aromatic coconut-based curry broth. Poke around in there and you'll find other vegetables hidden underneath the surface—carrots, bok choy, chunks of fried tofu, and tender nuggets of taro root. Get a side of the Homemade Roti Canai ($3.50) along with it. The crisp, flaky, and buttery flatbreads make the ideal vehicle for dipping and sopping up that sauce.

Nyonya

199 Grand St, New York NY 10013 (map) 212-334-3669 ilovenyonya.com

About the author: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is the Chief Creative Officer of Serious Eats where he likes to explore the science of home cooking in his weekly column The Food Lab. You can follow him at @thefoodlab on Twitter, or at The Food Lab on Facebook.

Chicken rendang. [Photographs: Max Falkowitz]

We were crestfallen when we saw that Bluebird Sky, our friendly neighborhood coffee shop, lunch spot, and meeting space, had closed. But a new nice-ish spot has opened in its place, and it's serving homestyle Malaysian food we'd be happy to eat again.

Aux Epices is owned by a husband and wife team—he French, she Chinese with years in Malaysia under her belt. The menu's pricier than elsewhere in Chinatown, with plates between $5.50 (small items) to $16. But we were pleased by how clean and light our dishes tasted without sacrificing the iconic flavors of Malaysian cooking or skimping on portion size—these are big plates of food.

Chicken is the only Rendang ($12.95) on the menu, but it's a tasty rendition: spoon tender and bold with shrimp paste and coconut. It's rich but less greasy than what you'll find at Nyonya around the corner, and it comes with a cone of coconut-tinged rice and some fresh pickles on the side.

Nasi Lemak.

You'll also find a nice Nasi Lemak ($12.95), the traditional Malaysian dish of rice with savory accompaniments. This version includes small fried fish, peanuts, a hard-cooked egg topped with curry paste, a small vegetable curry, and a side of tangy mushroom soup for moistening the rice. It also comes with a larger portion of delicately fried fish softened with onions and curry paste. You still get the fun of mixing and matching your nutty-fishy bites while also tucking into a more substantial dish.

Aux Epices is bright and tranquil with exposed brick and lots of natural light. It also has wi-fi, though it feels more like a restaurant than a working cafe. But it's a perk we might not refuse—you're paying higher than Chinatown prices not only for somewhat more refined food, but also for the pleasant space. We'll be back to see how it feels.

Aux Epices

121 Baxter Street, New York, NY 10013 (map)
212-274-8585

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photographs: Craig Cavallo]

Mafalde alla Bolognese ($8) is a classic pasta, and it falls under that same category on Giovanni Rana's takeaway menu. It's an extremely generous portion, and even more so when you consider they only use fresh homemade pasta.

The noodle is the perfect choice for a thick meat sauce—its wavy edges gently grab hold of the meaty sauce as they twist around your fork. The noodles are firm, but give way with a playful snap.

The bolognese is a deeply flavored delight in the dead of winter. At Rana, they use only beef, and if it doesn't come from Pat LaFrieda or F. Rozzo & Sons, they seek the inventory of Buon Italia just down the hall in Chelsea Market. It's braised in tomatoes with the traditional aromatics that make any ragu or bolognese satisfying: carrots, onion, celery, garlic, and fresh herbs.

Giovanni Rana's dine-in menu covers more exotic pasta ground, but does so at mostly double the price of items on the takeaway menu, on which nothing exceeds $14. We're pretty impressed with a to-go pasta that's so high quality, in a portion that can really fill you up.

Giovanni Rana

In Chelsea Market
75 9th Avenue, New York, NY 10011 (map)
212-370-0975
rananyc.com

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

Catfish isn't really lunch routine—even less so in Chinatown where it's hardly common—but this Ca Kho To (Caramel Fish, $9.95) at Pho Grand fits the bill surprisingly well.

Four chunks of tender catfish—not a dry or overcooked spot in sight—come bathed in Vietnamese caramel sauce: a savory-more-than-sweet syrup intensified with fish sauce and chilies. The caramel brings out the fish's natural sweetness without overwhelming it with sugar, and there's enough leftover sauce in the bottom of the clay pot to spoon over accompanying white rice.

It's not the cheapest lunch in Chinatown (almost two digits!), but it's a refreshing instance of moderate portioning and skilled fish cookery. Given the pretty meager Vietnamese options we have in this city, this dish is a plus.

Pho Grand

277 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002 (map)
212-965-5366
phograndny.com

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

We have a long and in-depth post about why hand-pulled soup noodles might taste best without the soup. The TL;DR—the broth usually isn't very good, and if you don't slurp fast, your noodles get overcooked. Which is why I'm so drawn to the Dry Noodles with Minced Pork Sauce ($4.50) at Lam Zhou on East Broadway—it's everything you want from good hand-pulled noodles, and nothing you don't.

The noodles are softer than the best hand-pulled noodle joints in Chinatown, but they retain a slight snap to keep you interested. As for the minced pork sauce, it's a cornstarch-thickened glaze with soft nubs of pork and a mild savoriness. It's nothing profound, but it does its job of supporting the noodles without overwhelming them. Leaves of bok choy that come along for the ride are a nice touch.

This heaping bowl of noodles is enough for any lunch, but I have a hard time going to Lam Zhou and not ordering the Dumplings ($2 for 8, $3 for 12), which are some of my favorites in Chinatown. Their skins are delicate, and the soy sauce-enhanced pork and chive filling, if a little compact, is porky and rich with juice. You'd do best to order them boiled, not fried. The fried crusts aren't that substantial, and the skins sometimes rupture, spilling out that precious juice.

You won't find much English spoken at Lam Zhou, so be prepared to order by number and make very clear what dish you're after. If you do, you'll be rewarded with noodles that won't lose the spring in their step, and dumplings to make any lunch feel special.

Lam Zhou

144 East Broadway, New York NY 10002 (map)
212-566-6933

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

You may remember Paris Sandwich in Chinatown from our Manhattan banh mi tasting, where its pre-made and reheated sandwiches came in last place. Since then they opened a second location on Grand Street where the sandwiches taste a little more fresh and balanced. Which had us wondering: does the neighborhood really need two Paris Baguettes five minutes away from each other?

Apparently the owners asked the same question, because in late 2012 they redrafted the Mott Street store and transformed it into Paris Restaurant, a sit-down restaurant with a full menu, including, we were told, some decent pho. The long story made short: this is a happy addition to the neighborhood's Vietnamese offerings, friendly and affordable even if it's not New York's Vietnamese restaurant messiah.

Let's start with that pho ($6 to $7), which regardless of flavor comes with a plate of Thai basil, bean sprouts, lime wedges, and chili slices on the side. Our Pho Chin Nan (Beef Brisket Noodle) featured a mild but balanced broth that was beef-forward with a hint of anise. The thinly sliced brisket is tender enough and the rice noodles offer some resistance to the teeth. It's not going to rock your pho-hungry world, but it's a substantial bowl of well made soup, one that's greatly improved with some of those basil leaves.

More noodles done right come in the form of bun, hefty bowls of cool rice noodles topped with an assortment of grilled meat and pickled veggies. The Bun Thit Nuong (Grilled Pork; $6) is all about the meat's sweet crisp edges enhanced by a restrained nuoc cham. Stir it together with extra chili paste and you have a lunch I'd eat happily any day of the week.

Several sautéed dishes fall into the category of "protein cubes with sauce," and some are well worth an order. We had no problem polishing off the Bo Luc Lac (Beef Cubes; $12) with a helping of rice. Sweet red onions, lightly pickled carrots and daikon, and a hint of fish sauce funk round out the caramelized brown sauce flavor the beef takes on. It's on the sweet side, but not overly so—a trend we saw throughout our meal.

But Dau Hu Sa Ot (Tofu Lemongrass; $8) is two thirds the price and a more interesting dish. The tofu is is pleasantly meaty beneath its sauce-slicked crust, and the thinly sliced squares keep each bite lively. Lemongrass comes through loud and clear in this dish, which is less sweet and a little more spicy than the beef cubes.

Our only disappointment was this Banh Xeo ($8), the so-called "crispy crepe" made soggy by excess oil, with a filling so dominated by beansprouts as to be rendered flavorless.

But four out of five isn't too shabby, especially when few dishes rise above $10 and you have interior decor as lovely as the framed baguette print in the photo above. Plus there's plenty more that catches our eye: beef wrapped in grape leaves, then grilled; crispy frog legs; mussels steamed in coconut milk.

As for those sandwiches, yup, they're still available at the to-go counter at the front, pre-made, -wrapped, and awaiting your order for a re-toasting (perhaps you can also order them fresh for eating in). But right past them is some food we're far more pleased about.

Paris Restaurant

113 Mott Street, New York, NY 10013 (map)
212-226-7221

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[iPhone photo: Carey Jones]

I don't usually eat lunch in Brooklyn—that whole "office in Manhattan" thing—but when subways are limited and buses are so packed as to be almost un-rideable, you end up wandering around your own borough quite a bit. Which brought me to SCRATCHbread in Bed-Stuy. While they're obviously known for their breads, the grits they serve ($3, plain with butter) are awesome—Anson Mills grits cooked to a perfect creamy, almost fluffy consistency.

I'd be satisfied with just these and a big pat of butter, but you can't go wrong adding a poached egg, thick-cut bacon, and a seriously spicy jalapeño sauce. (Add-ons are $1 each and also include kale pesto, green tomato jam, avocado, and a lot more.) It's prettier like this, but best churned up all together so you get a little heat and a little meat in each bite. The egg was a little overcooked—the yolk only a little runny—but for a restaurant open just a few days after a hurricane, I'm not all that inclined to complain.

* Sorry about the photo. Sometimes you get stranded by a hurricane and don't have a decent camera with ya.

SCRATCHbread

1069 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn NY 11216 (map)
718-744-8231
www.scratchbread.com

About the author: Carey Jones is the senior managing editor of Serious Eats. Follow her on Twitter (@careyjones).

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

The lunch specials at Shanghai 456 aren't that different than elsewhere in Chinatown, but they're much higher quality. Fried items are more crisp. Vegetables are less greasy. And the sauces have a certain delicate pungency, more than you'd expect for a lunch south of $7. I suspect the Eggplant in Garlic Sauce ($5.75 as a lunch special, pictured, with a forgettable bowl of soup) will become a new personal go-to while lunching in the area.

It's everything stir fried and braised eggplant should be: slightly charred on the edges with a satisfying wok hei smokiness, and cooked until extremely tender but not falling apart. The garlic sauce is the same savory brown stuff you've encountered elsewhere, but less sweet and gloopy, and more intense as well.

The respectable (i.e. not enormous) portion, clearly meant for one, is joined by a bowl of rice on the side. There's an option to add meat, but skip it. This silky eggplant needs no protein distractions. Dig into it on a crisp fall day.

Shanghai 456

69 Mott Street, New York NY 10013 (map)
212-964-0003

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photograph: Carey Jones]

With the arrival of fall and the occasional chilly, gloomy day, we've been looking for 1) warming, soothing lunch options that 2) don't make us stray far from our office. So the soups at Nyonya, right downstairs, start sounding pretty appealing.

Our favorite? The curry mee ($6.95) pictured above. The rich coconut milk broth, fragrant with chilies and lemongrass, is good enough to slurp down on its own. But the broth is just the first stage in this sort of Malaysian soup, of course. The bowl fills to the top with egg noodles, fish-stuffed peppers, and tofu puffs that drink in the orange broth. With just a little hint of heat, it's an eminently satisfying lunch—it's not actually on their lunch special list, but it doesn't need to be; $7 for a bowl of rich soup this size is a lunch deal whatever it's called.

The asam laksa ($6.95) is just what that soup should be—sour, a little spicy, and fishy as hell—so if you're down with that funky-tart kind of thing (and I usually am), it delivers. But it doesn't have quite the same rib-sticking satisfaction.

Nyonya

199 Grand St, New York NY 10013 (map)
212-334-3669

About the author: Carey Jones is the Senior Managing Editor of Serious Eats. Follow her on Twitter (@careyjones).

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

When you live in a Greek neighborhood, the Greek salad is your default salad, and you get a little picky about how it should really be: large hunks of crisp cucumber and ripe tomato, minimally seasoned and laced with a drip of olive oil, topped with large bricks of stanky feta, a very small amount of oregano, and maybe a couple olives. There are variations, of course: peppers sometimes, or onion, or some vinegar thrown into dressing. But no lettuce, no heavy dressings, and everything cut into pretty substantial chunks.

By most of these measures, the Greek Salad ($9.66) at GRK in the Financial District doesn't fly. But as a tasty ten buck pile of fresh vegetables in a neighborhood desperate for healthy, affordable lunches that don't suck? It's a fine thing. The tomatoes (plump and juicy, if not spectacular) are cut reasonably large, along with substantial cubes of feta that are likewise a level above. Thinly sliced cucumber, bell pepper, and onion get a little lost in the dressing, but they retain their crispness after travel, not wilty in the least.

This is not a perfect Greek Salad, but nearby lunchers would do well to eat it alongside a rather nice gyro, or on its own for a filling but light lunch.

GRK

111 Fulton St, New York, NY 10038 (map)
212-385‐2010
grkfresh.com

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photograph: Dave Katz]

As a kid growing up in suburban Connecticut, many of my first culinary experiences came form chain restaurants. First burger: probably Friendly's. First ribs: (unfortunately) Chili's. And today, I had another first culinary experience, one which is about as far away as possible from the fast casual eats of my youth. The ingredient was veal heart, the preparation was a mini kebab, and it was really quite good.

The Anticuchos ($6), meat skewers on a bed of Peruvian corn and lettuce at Morocho are filling but not too heavy, a perfect summertime lunch. Though I had never tried beef heart before today, my coworkers warned me that chefs tend to overcook the meat so that it becomes dry and rubbery. Lucky for me, kebab-meister Miguel knows his way around a beef heart. The nuggets were cooked perfectly, just medium-rare with a light crust and plenty of juice. Reminding me of filet mignon, the heart was tender with a slight offal aftertaste, at a much more reasonable price than restaurant filet.

The anticuchera sauce that coats the beef makes itself known with a hit of soy, aji panca, and dried oregano. Additionally, a thin, creamy huacatay sauce, loaded with herbs, is drizzled on top of everything, lending a fresh flavor to the cooked ingredients. These two sauces seep into the large kernels of choclo (Peruvian corn) that coat the bottom of the container, and they need it—I could imagine them being delicious when fresh and bright, but here they were a bit starchy, wan, and weak in flavor. Two halves of blue potato also adorn the dish, but they're underseasoned and pretty unmemorable.

Still, if only for the delicious veal heart, this is a great lunch for when you're feeling adventurous, but not too adventurous.

Morocho

Union Square West, New York, NY 10003 (near Staples; map)
646-330-1951
facebook.com/morochoNYC

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

Rarely can you call food that costs five bucks delicate, but that's the word to use regarding Shanghai Asian Cuisine's rice cakes. After a number of punch-in-the-mouth flavor-bomb meals at Mission Chinese Food, I've found myself looking for a Chinese lunch that's a little more subtle, and the stir fried pork and preserved cabbage rice cakes ($5.25) certainly qualify.

Don't expect smoky wok hei flavors here; instead look for light, tender, slightly sweet rice cakes fragrant with mild pickled cabbage and punctuated by quiet bites of pork and mushroom. The sauce is little more than the hot pickled cabbage juice and oil, just enough to tie everything together but unlikely to overwhelm any of the components.

None of this is to say the dish is boring, but sometimes you just want a hot plate of soft starch with some stuff in it, perhaps with a pot of tea to wash it all down. This is quite worthy of that lunch need. The rice cakes may not be the best in Chinatown, but they're sweeter and more tender than most. The "stuff" gives the textural contrast and slight flavor boost you want, but let the starch take the lead. Kudos to any restaurant that can make a plate of pasta, pork, and oil taste restorative.

Shanghai Asian Cuisine

14 Elizabeth Street, New York NY 10013 (map)
212-964-5640

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the editor of Serious Eats: New York. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

[Photo: Carey Jones]

When I had the Huevos con Machaca ($5.65) at Pinche Taqueria on Tuesday, over a perfectly civilized lunch outing with a colleague, I snapped a picture to "Lunch Today" it. When I ordered it for lunch on Wednesday when I could barely manage to pick up the phone to call in for delivery, I knew it was better suited to a "Hangover Helper." So we'll call it both.

Wednesday went something like this:

Carey: I need... a real lunch today. None of this nibbling bullshit.
Erin: ME TOO.
Carey: Ooooh, Leandra and I had this pile of beef and eggs and peppers for like five dollars yesterday and—
Erin: YES. That. What you just said. Order that.

I'll just go ahead and say that everyone should have a place that delivers massive piles of eggs, beef, tomatoes, peppers, and onions, with rice, beans, and tortillas, for less than six dollars. It's on the breakfast menu, but Pinche serves breakfast until 4 PM, and let's be real: do you want this much beef first thing in the morning? Our order arrived in about fifteen minutes, and Erin and I greedily grabbed our delivery bag, ripped it open, and dug in, not really bothering to get a plate or sit down or even take the container all the way out of the plastic bag. Ben walked in and laughed at us. "I've never seen you guys order delivery before."

How does it taste? Perfectly fine, exactly as it looks. The beef you generally see in machaca con huevos is shredded dried beef, whereas this seemed to just be little meat nubs, indistinguishable from whatever was on the salad "with beef" ("What sort of beef?" "You know. Beef") we'd also tried the day before. But it doesn't really matter, does it? Meat and eggs all jumbled up in a big steaming, happy pile—it is what it is; and what it is, is salvation.

Pinche Taqueria

227 Mott Street, New York NY 10012 (b/n Prince and Spring streets; map)
212-625-0090
pinchetaqueria.com

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

Although we first stopped by Hing Won for its Chinese-influenced banh mi, we decided—at the behest of several enthusiastic commenters—to give their Roast Pork over Rice ($6.43) a try. One of Ben Fishner's favorites from his Midtown office days, the lunch combo features enough meat, vegetables, and rice to keep you full throughout the day without breaking the bank (as Midtown lunches tend to do).

The star of the show is the satisfyingly salty helping of roast pork. Sporting the standard glaze of hoisin, soy sauce, and red food coloring, the pork slices are moist, but not too fatty, and somewhat texturally similar to slices of lean brisket. Beneath the pork sits a generous tangle of ong choy, a Chinese water spinach that Hing Won sautées with some garlic. Plenty tasty on their own, these greens work particularly well when mixed in with the heap of white rice in the other half of the container. For a cheap, filling Chinese takeout lunch in Midtown, one could do much worse than this plate of pork.

Hing Won

48 West 48th Street, New York, NY 10020 (map)
212-719-1451