Rice the Great

I haven't tried that many new places for lunch lately.  There's been a lot of Potbelly, Earl of Sandwich, Just Salad, Hale and Hearty, and catered lunches.  Not that there's anything wrong with that in my opinion, but I just haven't felt inspired to branch out. I blame the topsy-turvy summer for leading me toward the familiar and lessening my lunchtime experimentation.

Today I wandered around a lot, as usual, but decided to try someplace new - the Rice the Great cart sitting down the block from some other street food favorites on 50th Street.

Rice the Great's menu focuses on one thing - rice pilaf.  You can mix in beef or chicken, but otherwise the platter is the same.  Rice, meat, salad.  They had samples to try, which I appreciated, since I was a bit hungry after all my wandering around.

I decided on the chicken platter, which came in a giant box for only $6.  Half the box was taken up by the salad - mixed greens, tomatoes and cucumbers with oil and vinegar - and the other half had the rice pilaf, chicken and sauces.

I liked this lunch.  The salad was refreshing and light, which balanced the chicken and rice fairly well.  The chicken had a mild seasoning and wasn't dry.  The rice had a bunch of different ingredients mixed in - carrots, chickpeas, onions, raisins and a variety of spices.  Despite all the ingredients, the rice alone didn't have a tremendous amount of flavor.  But combined with the chicken and the sauces, it had more flavor yet still felt healthy. I actually appreciated that it appeared to be light on salt because too many places go overboard with it.  The white sauce was like tzatziki and the red sauce (which I expected to be hot sauce) was tomato-based. Both were good.

It was nice having a healthy, affordable freshly prepared option for lunch. I would give this another try.