Lazzaro (8th Avenue)
520 8th AvenueOur second full day in New York was going to be pretty top heavy in to the evening. I pulled the black out curtain all the way down in my hotel room and slept until about 10:30
I finally got out of bed and got moving a little after 11. We didn’t have to be to our first job site until around 4:00 but I had some things I needed to do on my own. I was waiting for my co-worker to send me something so I could finish some preparations for our early evening assignment.
I got an e-mail from her around noon with what I needed. I looked at my weather app and saw it was going to start raining soon. I decided to go grab a sandwich before it rained then get started on my afternoon work.
We were walking back from a job assignment near Madison Square Garden the night before. There was a sign for a restaurant that caught my eye. I decided to walk back there for lunch.
Lazzaro is on 8th Avenue near West 36th Street in Manhattan’s Garment District. The restaurant is fairly new and is part of a larger development project in the building. This space used to be a restaurant called Roast Kitchen and the concept looks fairly similar to that restaurant. This is one of two Lazzaro’s in New York City. The other is in the Financial District on Trinity Place.
The restaurant is pretty large for a New York City shop. It’s got a really clean look with a lot of silver, black and greys. There is some seating on one side of the restaurant and a counter that looks out the window on to 8th Avenue. The restaurant specializes in premium sandwiches, bowls, and salads. There’s a long counter of toppings for the bowls and salads in front of large ovens where they roast their own meat and cook their own bread.
There is a stack of pre-made sandwiches at the end of the counter near the cash register but it was one of the carved meat sandwiches that brought me in to this place.
I asked for the Prime Steak Sandwich off the Carved Meat Sandwiches menu. The guy making the sandwiches asked if I could give him five minutes. He was about ready to take some meat out of the oven and he’d rather cut off that steak than use an older one. I had no qualms with that. I would rather he do that too.
The Prime Steak Sandwich is really really simple yet really really amazingly good. It’s just freshly carved New York Strip steak with olive oil and sea salt. It’s served on a house made roll which is filled with the steak then popped back in the oven to toast the bread. I couldn’t believe how tender the meat was and how a little bit of sea salt made the flavor just pop. This is such a simple concept for a sandwich. It’s just meat and bread….and my mouth is watering several days later as I’m writing this.
The cost of the sandwich was $18. I could have eaten it there but I was trying to get ahead of the rain so I headed back to my hotel. Spoiler alert, the rain won.
I am so glad I noticed this spot on one of our walks from the Penn Station area back to our hotel on 39th Street. The words “carved meat” on the sign got my attention. I can’t pass that up. I also couldn’t eat pizza for every mean even though I really wanted to. This was a fantastic sandwich and one worth getting a little wet for.
SW Michigan Dining 