Hudson Eats at Brookfield Place is just another food court
Hudson Eats at Brookfield Place is this fancy new food court by Two World Financial Center. It has as much charm as a titanium hip replacement. Yes it’s bright and clean. Whereas last summer Steph and I were able to try hawker center food in Singapore that had charm and allure, here in New York this summer we have food courts that appear sanitized. We visited on a weekend and it felt spacious but left me wondering how a food court like that would survive if not for the normal week day lunch crowd. That got me to thinking about eating with your coworkers, which is something I pretty much never do. Do you eat with your coworkers? Are you… friends with them?!
Like what do you say when a coworker is like, “Let’s go try that Umami burger!” I know my first internal reaction is, “Motherfucker. Why you asking?! If I eat now, that depletes the weekly budget that Steph and I could spend together on food. Eat with practically strangers vs eat with wifey. Hmmm… Choices, choices… So I turn down eating with coworkers quite often. In fact I don’t even pretend to know anything about food with them. It’s like, “Pok pok? What?! Sounds funny!” But I mean, while Umami burger was actually fairly good tasting, paying $22 for a burger and some fries for lunch is pretty fucking bonkers in my mind. I expect to shit gold when burgers cost more than $20.
The best deal at Hudson Eats is probably the half chicken from Mighty Quinn’s. Obviously chicken is an inferior dish to their brisket, but it’s quite a bit cheaper by the pound. Half a chicken is a good deal of meat. So much so that since I don’t eat as much as I used to, wolfing down half of a bird actually gave me the runs. Yes folks, from the man who used to devour buffets as a tictac, now half of a chicken makes me spit foul lyrics out of my butthole. Oh wait, you thought this was a food blog and the flowery prose would be about actual food instead of fecal matter? Sorry friends (because that’s all that’s left of my readership, people who actually know me IRL) but we’ve actually talked about this IRL too.
One item to avoid like the plague at Hudson Eats is the Blackseed Bagel. Look, I’m sure it’s awesome at the store, but it’s pretty damn obvious from their tiny tiny stand at the food court that no baking happens there… so it’s probably made at some other location and delivered to Hudson Eats. Apparently people still get their Everything Bagel though because it was sold out when I tried to get one. Had to settle for a salt bagel and it was stale. If you really want to see if Blackseed is worth the hype, probably don’t expect too much from a food court.
Overall Hudson Eats is an OK place. It’s probably bangin’ if you’re a bro on wall street making beaucoup bucks and need a lunch spot to plan out high frequency ways to rip off pensioners. Good for you for affording $20 lunches. It’s not for the everyman. It’s certainly not a destination food court since the places that are worth it in the food court already have established brick and mortar locations.
I been thinking more about why I’ll hate the Bourdain Asian hawker stand idea. There’s really only two ways for it to turn out… it could turn out like Hudson Eats – big, industrial, sanitized and expensive. Or it could be like the hawker food version of Smorgasburg. Because contrary to my initial thoughts, rich yuppies and hipsters actually like Smorgasburg. That’s why that shit has been growing. But it begs the question that if you’re Tian Tian Chicken rice and you can kill it in NYC, why do you need Bourdain’s Smorgasburg with Asian food? You would just do it like Mighty Quinn’s… test out your product in a food fair setting and then turn it into a brick and mortar?
Posted by Danny on July 18, 2014 at 2:35 am
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