Late-night stops let students indulge cravings on the cheap

While a Broadway shake at Tom’s or a jumbo slice at Koronet will always have late-night appeal, sometimes students just need to go on a dietary adventure.

More and more, Columbians have been fleeing the claustrophobic confines of campus and hitting the town in the wee hours of the morning to gorge themselves. Mamoun’s Falafel in Greenwich Village and the halal cart on 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue (home of the famous “Chicken and Rice”) have become staples of the late-night eating scene, so some students may be yearning for a few new options. These holes-in-the-wall serve up giant after-hours fixes to students. For those willing to pay the subway fare, these eats are cheap: A full meal will run you less than 20 bucks.

Appetizer—Pommes Frites (Take the 1 to Times Square, then hop the R/W to 8th Street.)

While French fries usually play second fiddle to the hamburger, at Pommes Frites (Second Avenue between 7th and 8th streets) they take center stage. Open until 3 a.m. on weekends, this tiny grease emporium offers “authentic Belgian” fries—and that’s it. Cut fresh daily and fried twice—first slowly to cook each fry evenly and then again for crispness—the fries are served in paper cones, and drenched in one of 26 sauces (mostly mayonnaise-based).

The fries are delicious, and they get progressively better as you move toward the bottom of the bag. At the bottom, the fries are completely saturated with sauce, making them an even more delectable (if heart-attack-inducing) treat. And at $6.25 for a large order ($7.75 for a double), these deep-fried potatoes are a bargain. Sauces range from the traditional (barbecue and honey mustard) to the obscurely international (Irish curry, Vietnamese pineapple, and Mexican ketchup). So what’s the most popular sauce? Customers at Pomme Frites opt for “sweet mango chutney mayo” over ketchup.

Main course—Munchies (Take the 1 to 14th Street. Follow the labyrinthine path to the F, which will take you to Second Avenue.)

A half a dozen blocks away is ‘50s-style diner Munchies (Essex Street near Houston Street), a “gourmet fast food” joint, according to manager Parvez Ahmid. The highlight here is the eponymous “Munchies” menu, which offers easy-to-manage portions of standard fast-food fare, all for under $4.

The most sought-after munchie is the fried peanut butter and jelly—two steaming, zeppola-like puffballs filled with grape jelly and crunchy peanut butter rolled in bread. The staple of the restaurant’s main menu, though, is the Munchies Burger, a grill-seasoned patty with faux-Canadian bacon (the restaurant is halal) and secret Munchies sauce, a zesty mayonnaise-like concoction similar to that of In-N-Out Burger.

Now in its second year of business, Munchies is holding its own against nearby Lower East Side classic Katz’s Delicatessen—especially among the crowd that frequents the local Soho clubs along Houston Street and Avenue A. Open until 5 a.m. on weekends and at least midnight on weekdays, Munchies attracts a different late crowd every night depending on the particular club scene that night. Fridays, for example, are Caribbean nights, Mondays are Gothic, and Saturdays draw a bridge-and-tunnel pack. The place also tries to emulate the club scene to fit in to the neighborhood.
“I call it a food lounge,” Ahmid said. “You get drunk off the food.”

Dessert—Insomnia Cookies (Take the 1 train to Christopher Street.)

If the last two stops are not filling enough, make a final stop at Greenwich Village’s Insomnia Cookies (8th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, near MacDougal Street). Steps away from Washington Square Park, it is popular among late-night studiers and stoners at NYU. Open until 3 a.m. every night, this may be the only place in New York where a warm, fresh-baked cookie can be enjoyed past midnight.

The chocolate chunk is a favorite, but a trip can be better justified with one of Insomnia’s newest cookies: the ménage à trois—a cookie made daily from a combination of three different types of dough. One mixture, for example, is cookie crunch, peanut butter, and double chunk. Students can’t go wrong with most of the cookies here, but should avoid their subpar brownies. At $1 per cookie, the best part, though, are the prices. In fact, the ideal time to go may be during the afternoon—every weekday from 2 to 6 p.m., customers can load up and get three cookies for $2.50 during the store’s “happy hours.”

The range of late-night options, of course, is hardly limited to these three spots. Pop Burger is also in the Downtown area, as well as Cafeteria in Chelsea, Blue Ribbon Brasserie, and Ino Cafe in Greenwich—though these places may be a bit pricier. In any case, late-night eats outside of Morningside are always available, as long as some effort it made—this is The City That Never Sleeps, after all.