Midtown’s lunch rush is back.
On a sweltering summer weekday in Midtown Manhattan, where supposedly no one works anymore, a fashionable crowd lined the sidewalk outside the fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant Cava.
The Greek-inspired chain’s Broadway and 38th Street location was jokingly hailed as “the hardest club to get into in all of Manhattan,” in a now-viral TikTok posted by the Big Apple @HannahSueWilson.
Remember the pandemic? Do you remember when Midtown restaurants were at their wit’s end? Tell that to hip luncheons who wait up to 90 minutes in a queuing situation for their lemon chicken bowls.
“I queued for an hour and a half to get food here. It’s good and it’s healthy,” Kathleen Miszkiewicz, 25, told The Post, sweating in the glorious sunshine.
The cava was first launched in the 2010s in Rockville, Maryland, and the brand has now become commonplace in the Washington, DC area. Lately, however, the more recently opened branches in Manhattan have become something like the post-pandemic answer to Chipotle, or the various $20 hash salad joints.
In the TikTok clip, which has garnered more than 1.1 million views, a horde of subsistence seekers sacrifice their hour-long lunch breaks while waiting to be served $13 worth of mixed vegetables, proteins and grains .
Cava’s build-it-yourself bowls are so popular, with options like falafel, spiced lamb meatballs and roasted vegetables, plus a range of delicious dips, that those hoping to get a lunch at the not-so-fast-food chain often try to beat the rush by pre-ordering through Cava’s app or website. Miszkiewicz, who ordered ahead with his two colleagues, found those efforts foiled.
“We pre-ordered our food [online] at 11:30 a.m. for a 12 p.m. pick-up. It is now 12:30 p.m. and we still have to wait,” the business consultant said. “It’s boring, but the food is worth it.”
The restaurant’s baffling popularity argues for the return of the city’s energizing lunch hour, which fell sharply in 2020 and 2021 when most of the workforce worked (and ate) from home.
But Broadway Cava general manager Yasmairi Mercedes said her store has seen a customer boom since more workers had to return to their offices, many on a hybrid schedule, earlier this year.
“It’s really nice to see how the business has grown since the pandemic,” Mercedes, 21, told The Post as customers thronged through the door. “We’re actually making more money now than before the pandemic.”
Other locations, such as the Cava on 42nd Street near Bryant Park and the one on Madison Avenue on 40th Street, also draw crowds of hungry midday customers.
And as the nine-to-five continue to readjust to their physical working lives, many are using every minute of their afternoon recess to eat, drink and perhaps even bond.
“I wish so,” said Emily Seitz and Jill Folger, two 26-year-old Cava regulars and fashion retail colleagues, when asked if they had ever flirted with another hottie from business on Cava’s nightclub line.
The work besties, who pre-ordered their takeout, waited 15 minutes as part of the pick-up crowd.
Still, most seem content just to come in and score a good afternoon.
“The line is almost always very long,” Mani, 35, who works in construction and asked not to share his last name, told The Post. In the past, she’s waited over 45 minutes for her usual bowl of habanero chicken, leaving her only 15 minutes to feast.
In instances like that, Mani said with a laugh, “I just ran to my desk and ate really fast.”
Similarly, software pro David Carmichael, 29, told the Post that he usually doesn’t mind letting the minutes go by while he waits for a bowl of falafel and feta.
But even he has his limits. “Every time I see the line at the door, I walk away,” he said.
Such was the case for 33-year-old Loren Fass and her co-workers, who all took one look at Cava’s intense line and immediately opted to eat elsewhere.
“It’s long, and you have to come back [to work]moaned Fass, a staff member at a women’s lingerie wholesaler in Midtown.
Others were also deterred by the Cava crowd.
“I’m not a queuing person,” said Meagan Neville, 37, who stopped by with fellow fashion industry colleague Margaret Derby, 30.
“It’s good food,” Derby said. “But the TikTok nightclub [aspect] is not for me.
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