Gotham West Market

11th Avenue is a bit of a wasteland.  One of our partner agencies is over there and I've felt pretty bad for them when it came to their lunch options.  That is, until now when Gotham West Market opened.  Gotham West Market is an upscale food court on the ground floor of a luxury apartment building.  There are about 8 vendors there including Ivan Ramen, The Cannibal, and Blue Bottle Coffee.  There's also a Jeni's Splendid pop-up spot for your unique ice cream cravings.  Basically, you can hit up all the far-away restaurants the cool kids gush over in one fell swoop .  I, for one, am not going to travel to Brooklyn for coffee or Tokyo for ramen, but if their much praised brands are now a 17 minute walk from my office I am happy to check it out.

Some of the food is sold at above average lunch prices.  I don't know about you, but I'm not planning to spend $11 on a sandwich every day...but I'm not opposed to it every once in a while if it's a really good sandwich.  I gravitated toward Choza Taqueria because I was craving Mexican but also because I saw how much more convenient it would be to eat a burrito bowl with a fork in a meeting vs. slurping a bowl of soup or a getting my hands all messy with a sandwich.  Here, my bill came in at just over $9, making not much more expensive than Chipotle but with better ingredients (sorry to all the crazy Chipotle freakazoid sycophants out there).  I got the veggie version with zucchini, squash, mushrooms, and queso fresco.  All the ingredients were fresh and the plate wasn't super saucy so it didn't weigh me down.  I do recommend requesting a side of the sauce (like a chipotle aioli) that they put on their corn.  It kinda made the meal for me.

I had not really imagined a world where high end food courts were a thing.  But now that the concept is here, I don't hate it.