I second Angelo's as a good choice - there is a second location on 57th st between 6th and 7th - slightly closer to City Center than the Broadway location. There's a Five Guys burger on 55th between 5th and 6th - probably less hectic than Burger Joint for a group of high schoolers. If you're up for Chinese there's Joe Shanghai (56th btwn 5th/6th) and Szechuan Gourmet (55th/bway)

awesome! this looks just like the sam gyup sal place I went to in LA which was awesome

in addition to the above i also recommend Donburi-ya - solid food, good prices and very quick service, which is important for lunch for me. ISE is another good one, although a bit of a walk from GC

i also second the recomendation for cafe zest - i eat there about three times a week. also there is a new small japaense grocery store called dainobu which also has bento boxes to go.

I've been to the new BCD tofu house twice in the past few weeks - I think its definitely better than seoul garden. but im not sure if it was as good as the BCD i remember having in LA. There's also So Kong Dong in Fort Lee right by the GWB - I haven't been there in a while but that was always notches better than Seoul Garden.

Have you looked into hotels that have nice restaurants attached to them? I once went to an event set up at the London where we had a private room in one of the hotel's event rooms, and the food was from Gordon Ramsey's restaurant. I'd imagine they'd set up something similar for breakfast, although it's probably going to be pretty expensive. Other similar places that come into mind in midtown are Le Parker Meridien / Norma's and Chambers Hotel / Town.

the last time i went, which was a while ago, i had their combinatin platter which came with 4-5 different kinds of meat, most of them not marinated. i remember thinking at the time that the meats were of the highest quality id tasted at a korean restaurant. but this was before i tried madangsui so im not sure - i need to go back for a comparison.

ive heard from several people that the sam gyup sal is really good at don's. thats another reason i want to go back there. if i remember correctly i think they have a wine marinated, thick-cut sam gyup sal, which ive never had in ny.

I tried this place twice in the past two weeks. once because i noticed that it was new and wanted to try it, and another time because it seemed to be much less crowded than others on the block on a wednesday night.

the first time i tried something id never seen anywhere else before (even in korea) which was (i forget the exact name) something like "go chu sam kyup sal cchigae" or spicy pepper pork stew. it was interesting only because id never seen it before - as the name suggest its a chigae with sam kyup sal with a go chu chang based soup - but it wasn't very tasty.

on the second try i had the mae eun gal bi tang (spicy beef rib soup). as lau noted it wasn't terrible, but bland.

overall i rate hangang equally with all of the other bland generic "all-purpose" korean restaurants on 32nd street.

my two favorite places are actually a bit off the main ktown strip. one is madangsui, which is on 35th street between 5th and 6th. the other is don's bogam which is on 32nd street between 5th and madison. both specialize on bbq/meat in contrast to most places in ktown which typically have larger menus. between the two, madangsui is more of a "traditional" korean place whereas don's bogam is more of a "modern" korean place, although its not a westernized/fusion style korean like woo lae oak. meaning if your out-of-towners are new to korean, don's bogam might be slightly more appealing. also if you want to grill seafood, i think don's bogam has a wider selection than madangsui.