For lunch today, Sal and I headed over to PS 450, which is really more of a bar than a restaurant, but bars don't make enough money at lunch. We had our choice of sitting at tall tables in the front, the bar in the middle, or sitting essentially on the floor at very short tables in the back. As I despise sitting on stools when I eat, we opted for the uber-low tables in the back room, where only one other group was eating.

The atmosphere is lounge-ish and chill at lunch time. The best looking items on the menu all fell under the "POPS" section, with items like Mac 'n' Cheese Pops and Braised Short Rib Nachos. However, we stuck to entrees: Sal ordered the Pulled Pork with Strawberry Chipotle BBQ Sauce, Crispy Shallots on Brioche and I ordered the Lobster Roll with tarragon Caviar Aioli and Mache. Both were served with healthy bowls of french fries and both arrived extremely fast.

We both started with the fries-- wow! These are hands down the best french fries I've had in New York City, possibly ever. We both devoured our entire bowls, each of which would normally be enough for two people. I had mine with mayo and Sal had his with ketchup.

I asked Sal how his pork sandwich was, he said it decent, but pointed out that its sauce carries all the flavor and good pulled pork should bring flavor from the pork itself. He also recommends not ordering that sandwich if you intend on keeping your shirt clean.

The menu specifically said that my lobster roll contained meat from a 1.25 pound lobster, which was impressive for the relatively low price of $18 (good lobster rolls range in the $20-35 range). In reality, there was about half as much lobster on the roll. And while the lobster salad itself had the perfect amount of aioli, there was not enough total lobster salad to combat the dryness of the bread. The flavor of the tarragon and mache were a nice match for the lobster, but I absolutely could not taste caviar or garlic-- after all, it was called aioli. I would say this is absolutely a case of you get what you pay for.

In the end I recommend going to PS 450 to get those fries. Based on those, I have to believe that my original guess about those POPS would be correct-- I'll have to go back after work one day to find out.