El Sabroso

"If you want to grab a takeout lunch near Herald Square, and you’d rather not eat something that was designed in a corporate test kitchen, try El Sabroso. A highly underrated Garment District staple, this Ecuadorian spot serves beef stew, pernil, and seco de gallina from a little counter hidden down a freight entrance on 37th Street. Stop by before they close at 5pm, and get a foil container packed to the brim with rice, beans, and tripe in a creamy peanut sauce." - Bryan Kim

"Amid the over-stuffed wholesale shops and hole-in-the-wall newsstands of Manhattan’s Garment District, it’s easy to miss El Sabroso Restaurant on the first pass since it looks pretty much like every other freight entrance in the city. Located behind steel grey industrial doors in the drab loading entrance of a nondescript skyscraper, it’s overshadowed by the neon bolts of spandex and bejeweled evening dresses for sale at the wholesalers nearby. But the lines that form outside this hidden lunch counter are threatening to give away one of the neighborhood’s best kept secrets. El Sabroso is known for cheap and tasty Latin-American food, and most dishes, like pernil and pollo guisado, cost just $6 a plate. Tony Molina, the owner and operator of the tiny little luncheonette, purchased it from its previous owner who had run the counter for an unknown period prior to his reign. Since seating is limited, most customers take their meals to go." - ATLAS_OBSCURA

"There are some places you will most likely never know about unless you happen to work in the area. El Sabroso is one such spot, and you’ll find it behind a freight entrance on the ground-floor of a large building on 37th Street. It’s open from 7am to 5pm, and it’s there to serve a good, affordable lunch when you need something better than whatever brown-paper-bag thing you were planning on eating at your desk. The food is Ecuadorian, and your meal will most likely consist of some kind of protein (pork, oxtail, goat, etc.) over rice with a side of beans. There are also a few seats if you need to eat your roast pork away from your workplace." - bryan kim

"After Rodolfo Perez immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic, he spent several years working in a garment factory in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. Today, the sharp-dressed, strapping Perez runs a Dominican eatery in the same factory’s elevator vestibule, serving the very workers he once labored alongside. He calls it “a family restaurant.” He bought what was once the building’s hamburger stand and opened Acuario Cafe in 1991. “I used to work in the factory, so I decided to [sell my food at] a cheaper price for the people working,” he told Gothamist. At the start, he sold hefty plates of rich Latin classics such as carne guisada, pollo guisado, and customer favorite rabo guisado, an oxtail stew, over a bed of rice and beans for $3.50. Almost 30 years later, he sells the same plates for only a few dollars more. The weekday lunchtime crowd regularly snakes out the door to the service-entrance hallway and around the corner. A confounding mix of construction workers, businesspeople, and parking lot attendants wait patiently for Perez’s plates while deliverymen push past, rolling oversized carts of textiles in and out of the building. While the surrounding neighborhood has changed drastically, many of the customers are regulars of 10 or more years who still patronize the cafe regularly. Know Before You Go The cafe is closed on weekends." - greatoz99, lukefater

"This ancient loading dock café is one of the few still operating in the Garment Center; once they were a prominent feature of the neighborhood. El Sabroso specializes in Ecuadorian fare, and guatita is one of its best dishes, a turmeric-laced stew of potatoes and honeycomb cow tripe. Spoon on the housemade hot sauce called “aji.”" - Robert Sietsema