Becco was on our list for a while. This restaurant in the Theater District was always full around theater times, so of course, that’s naturally alluring. It was first opened in 1993 by Lidia Bastianich and her son, Joe, who you might recognize from the U.S. version of the MasterChef series. The Yelp ratings of the food seem surprisingly low compared to the Google counterpart, so that increase our curiosity.

We had a show to catch at the Lincoln Center, and the area had a lot of New American and Italian restaurants within half a mile. We’ve rarely explored anywhere north of 60th St. This area is just across the street on the lower west side of Central Park. The restaurant itself is located in a historic residential building called Hotel des Artistes. I was easily able to make a reservation the day before for a 5:15 PM on a Saturday evening.

Chef Andrew Carmellini has some pretty good restaurants (NoHo Hospitality) that we’ve been to. Some recent ones that we really enjoyed include Cafe Carmellini and Carne Mare. Locanda Verde opened a second location in the Hudson Yards area. This is his ode to urban Italian cuisine, and we wanted to try this out because the exterior seemed very nice. I made a reservation for 2 for 5:15 on a Friday evening without any issues.

I was looking for a quick and solo type of restaurant around the Hudson Square area. I decided to look into burgers, and I was debating Hamburger America and this Revelie Luncheonette. This restaurant is walk-in only and is across the street from Raoul’s. Since the burgers seem enticing and the restaurant received decent reviews, I decided to give this a try. I was able to walk in at around 5:30 PM on a Thursday and find an empty stool seat.

We went into the city to watch a broadway show, and I had to look for a restaurant in the area without worrying about reservations. I stumbled onto this Hell’s Kitchen Italian restaurant that seemed to have pretty decent menu items. We were able to walk in around 5:00 PM on a Friday evening pretty easily, and there wasn’t much foot traffic at all. We were seated next to the window and had a very casual, quick dinner.

Le Veau d’Or is French for “the golden calf”. Making reservations for 2 for this was incredibly difficult as it gets sniped the moment the reservations come up. Luckily I checked a random time, and I noticed there was some 5:00 PM slots opened on a Wednesday. This is one of the hottest restaurants in the city because it’s a revived restaurant from the Frenchette and Le Rock chef/owners, Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr.

We were out and about in Central Park taking pictures, and we were looking for a place to check out midday. This no-frills Mexican-like restaurant was near where we walked out of Central Park. We were a bit skeptical of this restaurant since the menu was on the smaller side, but we decided to give it a try. We were seated without reservations pretty easily around 1 PM on a Sunday afternoon.

The View was New York City’s iconic revolving restaurant, bar, and lounge, and recently reopened after a 5-year hiatus. It’s located in the New York Marriott Marquis hotel, and it was recently taken over by the Union Square Hospitality Group (known for places like Gramercy Tavern, Manhatta, and The Modern. Reservations were fairly easy to get, and since I was craving for prime rib, I snagged one just to see how it was like.

We finished watching a matinee of a Broadway show, and we’re running out of desirable early dinner options in the Midtown area. This one was on my list for quite some time as it looked like a restaurant that was a no frills izakaya type restaurant. This restaurant is about 2 doors down from Valerie, a pretty popular Midtown restaurant. We were able to walk in around 4:30 PM on a Saturday without any issues.

We decided Don Don because we’ve really been enjoying Chef Sungchul Shim’s restaurants, including Mari and Gui. I made a reservation for 2 for 5:30 PM on a Friday just a few days ahead, and it was fairly easy. Located very close to Bryant Park, it’s along the way from Valerie, and it can be easily missed. It’s pretty discreet until you take a look at the front window.