We had tickets to the Banksy exhibit later in the evening near the border of Chelsea and West Village. This mussel restaurant was something I had liked to go since I moved out to NYC, and finally all stars aligned. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of mussel restaurants in NYC. In Los Angeles in Culver City, I used to go to a place called “Meet in Paris”, and it had literally 10+ different types of mussel broths. This reminded me of those vibes, so I wanted to try this out.
All you can eat (AYCE) Korean BBQ places are pretty sparse the closer you get to Manhattan. If you did find one, the quality is kind of questionable compared to the a’la carte places. We discovered this restaurant a few months back when we went to the Popeyes next door. It hadn’t opened yet, but there seems to be a few restaurants next to it that are opening in the very near future. This restaurant used to be called “HoneyPig”, but apparently it changed its name right before opening.
We walked by this restaurant one evening as we were walking back, and I was reminded that this was something I wanted to try. At a quick glance, the interior seemed pretty spacious, and I always go back and forth on whether we can go here. My partner is never fanatical about noodles, but luckily this restaurant has other things such as dim sum and cold cut appetizers. This restaurant opened last year during the pandemic in October and seemed to have a pretty steady flow of repeat customers.
This is located right next to the water near restaurants like Maiella and American Brass. Whenever we try walk-in, they always tells us it’s an hour wait even when there’s no one outside. Since we didn’t have anything else close by that we wanted to try, we were able to book a reservation for an early Saturday dinner again.
For some reason this restaurant is very popular with a large latin clientele. People will have massive birthday parties or get togethers.
Nearby, we had gotten free tickets to the Intrepid museum which sat on the water along 46th. The museum closed at 5 PM sharp, and we picked this restaurant since it was not too far of a walk. This had been on my list for a few years already, but we’re rarely in the Hell’s Kitchen area. What’s nice about Hell’s Kitchen restaurants is that the restaurant prices are not usually that expensive and the food is pretty good.
Atera is a two Michelin Star restaurant in New York City. We’ve been wanting to go to this restaurant pre-pandemic, and each time we make a reservation, it was always cancelled due to shifts in NYC rules around the pandemic. Fortunately, the city is coming alive, and the reservation stuck this time around. We celebrated our very special anniversary at 5 PM. The cool thing about this restaurant that attracted me was that it had a temperament pairing of non-alcoholic juices. Although I would have liked to order the wine pairing, I always get full and drunk too fast with alcohol such that it doesn’t make the experience enjoyable. The restaurant is located on Worth Street, and it’s inside a building that looked very discreet on the outside. When you enter the building, the restaurant doors are directly on the left next to the elevators.
We somehow won tickets to Shakespear in the Park, and we were debating whether we would scour for a restaurant in the west or east side. I was browsing on Yelp, and I saw this was very close to the Delacorte Theater. The interior pictures looked pretty amazing, and the food seemed pretty good although somewhat typical American. We ended up showing up promptly at opening and were seated right away without reservations.
Partners Coffee was formerly known as Toby’s Estate coffee. When I first moved to NYC many years ago to Williamsburg, I’ve always felt they had my preferred coffee beans and coffee. The general atmosphere probably falls a little under “hipster” coffee, but it’s quite delicious. I have always tried to visit other coffee shops in NYC for their coffee and beans, but I’ve always fallen back to this. In some locations, they have brewing classes and a roaster, but because this one in Long Island City is much smaller, it’s just a straight up coffee cafe.
On this very humid Friday afternoon, I had to make my way into the Flatiron area to run some errands. This Korean restaurant was something that seemed appealing since we haven’t had Korean food in a while. Normally for decent Korean, you’d have to venture into midtown, but the menu looked pretty decent online. We were fortunate that that they still had the NY restaurant week menu which was quite alluring. It’s $39 for an “entree” choice (dolsot bibimbap, kimchi fried rice, or teriyaki chicken), appetizer (japchae or steamed/fried pork dumplings), and soup (pork kimchi or vegetarian doenjang). We thought it was going to be personal portions, but you can actually just order 1 set and share it. The portion size was surprisingly large.
We’ve visited most of the Long Island City restaurants around the Vernon Blvd area. We had stopped by Blend on the Water hopefully for a walk-in, but there was already a wait. We’ve walked by Manducatis Rustica several times, and we figured it was worth a shot to see if they can take us. When we arrived, there was hardly anyone there. They told us that they had garden seating, so we opted for that.