Last year, Gary Roberts, 34, spent his lunch hours wolfing down slices of greasy pizza and beefy sub sandwiches. The only thing green about his typical meal was the cash that he used to pay for it, and he ran the risk of falling into a food coma after an unhealthy lunch, dangerous for his job as a bond salesman. “You’re liable to miss something important,” he says.
Now his typical lunch order is a boneless chicken breast and a side of charred broccoli from the Little Beet (135 W. 50th St.), a fast, casual lunch spot specializing in plates of lean protein and veggie sides that opened in December.
Midtown Manhattan, once a lunch wasteland of mediocre sandwiches and oil-slicked slices, is suddenly eating its veggies — and we’re not talking about wilted lettuce from the deli salad bar. Trendy health-focused spots are popping up among the office towers, and businessmen are lining up for kale and quinoa served from Le Creuset pans in spaces that meld rustic Brooklyn chic — chalkboards, exposed brick — with chain-restaurant convenience.
“It’s a true break from the monotony of the typical sandwich-and-salad lunch spots,” Jake Vachal, 29, an investment banker who works in Midtown, says of the Little Beet, where the line is typically dozens deep at lunchtime.
It’s the same a block away at Roast Kitchen (740 Seventh Ave., which Alexander Xenopoulos, the owner of the PAX sandwich chain, opened last October to keep up with the carb-averse times.
“People were getting tired of sandwiches, and there was a gap in the marketplace,” Xenopoulos says of the inspiration behind the new eatery, where cubicle bees can order up hot or cold “bowls” of vegetables topped with protein.
It’s a winning formula for Vernon Coles, 43, a finance specialist and regular at Roast Kitchen.
“It used to be sandwiches, pizza, Chinese food, whatever was around,” he says. “This is health-oriented and fast, both of which are pluses for me.”
A strict diet is the reason Patrick Stevenson, 43 and a legal sales executive, frequents Dig Inn, a pioneer of protein-veggie plates that has seven locations in Manhattan.
“I want to eat healthy,” says Stevenson. “Instead of brown-bagging it, I come here for chicken and grains.”
Restaurateurs certainly realize there’s a market in guys who, in less enlightened times, grabbed lunch at whatever was across the street from their office, calorie counts be damned.
“We are targeting office workers,” says Jessie Gould, vice president of marketing for Organic Avenue, the pricey juice bar and vegan eatery that opened its first Midtown outpost near Bryant Park last month. “New Yorkers in general are looking to be healthy, and we are trying to accommodate them.”
According to Jonathan Neman, co-founder and CEO of Sweetgreen (1164 Broadway; sweetgreen.com), a trendy salad chain that opened in NoMad last year and just expanded to Tribeca, eating well isn’t just eating well to get your vitamins and minerals, it’s also a status symbol. “Taking care of yourself is the new luxury,” he says. “Eating healthy has become cool.”
Not everyone agrees. Zach Brooks, founder of the food blog Midtown Lunch, says you won’t find him nibbling on roasted Brussels sprouts at these new spots.
“There have been salad bars in Midtown delis for years. These new places are repackaging generic, healthy food,” he says. “But we’re still looking for the good, fattening lunches.”