I believe I have iterated this several times before, but there are not a lot of food options around the UN.  It’s not uncommon for Hakeem and I to disagree on what we want to eat for lunch, and the food court affords us both whatever we want.  Hakeem decided to go to Two Boots Pizza, and I decided to try out the Manhattan Chili Company.

I decided to get the four bean and butternut squash, which was the hottest veggie chili that they had.  They also had a red lentil and totally vegetable chili which were the medium hot and mild variants of their chili (though the totally vegetable could arguably be called a soup instead).  This soup was actually pretty hot, but was not inedibly so, which is the appropriate amount of hot for my liking.  All of the chilis are vegan (unless you decide to add cheese) and gluten-free.

If you get a bowl of chili, you can get two packets of oyster crackers or a mini-cornbread muffin.  Being an intelligent person, I obviously decided to get the mini-cornbread muffins.  The cornbread was mediocre, but it was helpful to temper the heat of the hot chili.

All in all, the food at Manhattan Chili Co. is not bad, vegan and celiac friendly, but my major caveat against it would be that it is very pricy.  For my bowl of chili, I ended up paying almost $10!  Quite exorbitant for trivial amount of chili I was given.  But, this is New York, and I am competing against investment banker jerks who have no qualms dropping $10 on a skimpy bowl of chili.  For this, I can’t give them full points, but I’ll give them four cheese sandwiches for being pretty vegetarian friendly.

Manhattan Chili Company
109 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017-8500 
(212) 682-6644