Details: Located at 145 W 55th St, New York, NY 10019. Official site is http://www.betweenthebread.com/
Between the bread is like Dig Inn, except that it’s a few dollars more expensive. In exchange, you also get more options, like more meat options, baked goods, breakfast and sandwiches.
Details: Located at 40 West 55th Street, New York, NY 10019, among other locations. The official site is https://www.diginn.com/
Dig Inn is a fast casual American style restaurant. Think Chipotle style assembly line service with slightly higher quality, healthier, American style food.
Details: Located at 946 8th Ave, New York, NY 10019, among too many other locations. Official site is www.mcdonalds.com
This passing summer, McDonald’s has started a new promotion that seemingly targets lovers of fast casual burgers and chicken sandwiches and specialty hot sauce. In other words, McDonald’s is making an attempt at millennials and yuppies. Two of these attempts that I’ve tasted are the Sweet BBQ Bacon with Buttermilk Crispy Chicken and the Sriracha Mac Sauce.
Details: Located at 8 W 28th St, New York, NY 10001. The official site is https://www.madenicenyc.com/
Made Nice is fast casual restaurant from the chefs at Eleven Madison Park, the three Michelin starred restaurant also considered by http://www.theworlds50best.com to be the best restaurant in the world. This is their take on fast casual and what’s most surprising is not that the food is good, but that the food is only a few dollars more expensive than many other fast casual places. In fact, many other fast casual places are the same price. The primary difference here is that Made Nice has the cachet of Eleven Madison Park.
Details: Located at 54 West 56th Street, New York NY 10019, among other locations. The official site is https://www.nayaexpress.com/
Naya Express is a chain of fast casual restaurants, like Chipotle, which differ in that they lean more towards Mediterranean flavors. That just means that they add hummus and pita bread to your burrito bowl.
Details: Located at 3102 Sports Arena Blvd, San Diego, CA 92110. The official site is http://www.in-n-out.com/
I’ve finally visited the much vaunted In-N-Out Burger. As an east coaster, I’ve never really had the chance to try In-N-Out.
I ordered the Double-Double (cheeseburger with two beef patties, lettuce, tomato, and mayo) and the animal style fries (“secret” but not so secret fries topped with chopped grilled onions and a thousand island type sauce). The burger was under $4.00 and the fries were under $4.00, too.
When it comes to burgers, Shake Shack is usually the hamburger I use to compare with other burgers and currently my favorite fast casual burger in New York. Compared to Shake Shack, the Shake Shack burger comes out slightly on top. The fries were about as good as Shake Shack.
However, when considering the price, In-N-Out is easily superior to Shake Shack. Everything at Shake Shack costs around five to ten dollars. The fact that In-N-Out can price a fast casual burger and fries at under four dollars a piece is nothing more than miraculous.
Overall, the taste and quality of the burger and fries at Shake Shack and In-N-Out are about the same. When price is considered however, In-N-Out is clearly far better than Shake Shack. It’s a shame then that In-N-Out is a west coast thing and will likely not be coming to the east coast in the future to compete with Shake Shack.
Score: 7.5/10
Details: I went to the one near Rockerfeller Center in New York City, but there are lots of locations all over the city. Official site is http://www.fiveguys.com/
So I’ve reviewed a number of fast casual burger places and it’s about time to review this place. Five Guys is burger and fries place that also serves hot dogs. The main difference between this place and the others in New York City are that they serve boxes of peanuts for free, many of the toppings are free (not bacon), and the style of their fries is a little different.
When I come here, I normally order a cheeseburger all the way (has all of their free toppings) and an order of their fries, either Cajun or regular. The burger is about as good as a Shake Shack burger or slightly worse. The fries however, are probably the best fries out of all fast casual burger places in this price range. They are thick cut and fried as their ordered. You can get some Cajun spices sprinkled onto it or just have the regular old salt. What I love about Five Guys is that after they put your order into a brown paper bag, they then take a scoop of more fries and dump it into the bag. This turns the bag into a greasy mess, but it’s nice that they give you more than enough fries than is necessary. Normally, I have trouble polishing off a regular sized order of fries.
The price for a cheese burger all the way and an order of regular fries is around fifteen dollars. That puts the price at just about the same range as Shake Shack.
So which is better? Shake Shack or Five Guys? I would say that Shake Shack has slightly better hamburgers, while Five Guys has far better fries. So, either is all right depending on what your feeling.
Score: 6.5/10
Details: All three restaurants have multiple locations. Official websites are as follows: https://chipotle.com/, https://www.dostoros.com/, and https://www.qdoba.com/
I’ve eaten Chipotle so much that I figured I might as well write something about it. Although it needs little explanation, Chipotle is a chain of Mexican (sort of) restaurants that serve burritos, burrito bowls, tacos and chips. You generally pick your rice, a meat and then some toppings (cheese, pico de gallo, lettuce, hot sauce, peppers and onions). Oh, and they have guacamole which costs around $2.50 for a freaking scoop. It’s simple but pretty good. The Chipotle company generally advertises itself as a healthy to eat option, but recently they’ve had an E. coli scare and the price of their stock has dropped. With that said, every time I got by a Chipotle in New York City, they do not seem short on business.
To me, Chipotle is just fuel. It’s a balanced bunch of food groups that solves the problem of hunger. It’s not exactly the healthiest thing to eat, but healthier than fast food (McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc.). Plus, it’s relatively fast and convenient, perfect for your lunch break if you ignore the ridiculous lines Chipotle has.
Dos Toros is essentially the same as Chipotle except with some small difference. The primary difference is that its slightly more expensive. Chipotle is about $9.00 for a chicken burrito bowl without guacamole, Dos Toros is around $10.00. They also crush and sprinkle chips in your burrito bowl if you want it. As for taste, Chipotle tastes slightly better.
Of the three Mexican fast casual restaurants in the title, Qdoba is easily my favorite. The primary reason for this is because they have a melted cheese sauce. I can’t count the number of times I walked into a Chipotle wishing they had some sort of nacho cheese sauce, but they don’t and neither does Dos Toros. Furthermore, Qdoba is slightly cheaper and tastes slightly better than the other two in my opinion. Unfortunately, there are no Qdoba’s in Manhattan so if you want to try it, you need to get out of the city.
Qdoba Score: 6.3/10 The winner of Mexican fast casual, but fewer locations than Chipotle and no locations in Manhattan.
Chipotle Score: 6/10 Second place.
Dos Toros Score: 5.8/10 Last place.
Details: Located at 940 8th Ave, New York, NY 10019, among other locations. Official site is http://indikitch.com/
I don’t normally write a review for fast food or fast-casual food, but I tried Indikitch the other day and felt compelled to do so.
Indikitch is essentially fast-casual Indian food served in the same format as Chipotle, that is assembly line style and very quickly. It’s Chipotle, but with Indian food instead of Mexican.
A new one opened in Midtown and I decided to visit for lunch. The space is very large, clean, and modern. Prices are around ten dollars for a meal.
In regards to how you order, its pretty much like Chipotle. Here’s the link of the menu for convenience: http://indikitch.com/menu.html. First you pick a meal. Personally, I prefer the feast in that you get some veggies and lentils along with nan. Next you pick a meat or if you don’t like meat, then you can pick a veggie or cheese based main ingredient. They all come with rice, too.
One main difference with Chipotle is that while the meat is prepared before hand (like Chipotle), they actually cook it with some sauce on the spot with every order. Some people might appreciate this, some might not, but it’s noteworthy.
As for taste, the food is pretty good. It’s not as good as a sit down Indian restaurant, but its still not bad for something prepared so quickly.
The main reason why I needed to write a review is because Indikitch filled a need sorely missing in this city. That is, we need more food of similar quality and speed as Chipotle, but we need it to taste different.
A while back, I (and I imagine a lot of people) ate Chipotle for a prolonged period of time. I worked in the city and Chipotle was fast and tasted all right. But you can only eat the same thing so many times and after a while, I no longer had any desire to eat there. Ever. And really, I didn’t eat at Chipotle all those times because I loved the taste. Chipotle was just so easy. And relatively cheap. And the quality was far better than McDonald’s or any other fast food chain. But what I really wanted was a greater variety of food, maybe from a different region, with the same relative price, speed, and quality Chipotle delivered. As a wise man once said, “man cannot live on bread alone…,” or burrito bowls.
Luckily for me, Indikitch fulfilled that desire. To a greater extent, Indikitch stands at the forefront of a potentially profitable trend that may be descending upon the city. For example, Korilla, the well-known Korean-Mexian fusion food truck, has opened a brick and mortar location near St. Mark’s. Like Indikitch, they serve Korean food in the Chipotle format.
It is my hope that both Indikitch, Korilla, and any other similar restaurants using the Chipotle method find great success in their endeavors. I envision a day where there aren’t only Indian and Korean foods represented in this format. I want Thai food, Japanese food, Italian, French, English, and every other country represented in this convenient way. Perhaps one day, they will even open a food court where all these competing restaurants work together to provide a truly multicultural and convenient place for a person to eat lunch during the work day while preserving their piggy banks. A true United Nations of fast-casual food.
In conclusion, Indikitch is great. Go try it out. Go try Korilla at their brick and mortar location. Stop eating Chipotle, or at least eat less of it. And prepare yourself for the oncoming onslaught of convenience, speed, and quality, in a multicultural variety of flavors.
Score: 7/10
Muse Bank 