This is a restaurant from the same people that brought Maiella. Even though that restaurant was modern Italian, this one was more New American. It sits across the Gantry park near the Hunters Point library. Our first visit was on a Sunday, prior to the day that New York City had to shutdown dining in restaurants due to the coronavirus. Because people weren’t really out and about, the restaurant had many empty tables.
Tonight was another venture out to the area around Vernon Blvd. There are so many restaurants here to try. This one here is an Italian restaurant near Gantry park. There are a lot of cars for some reason compared to other parts of Long Island City. The restaurant was able to accommodate us as a pair of walk-ins at around 6:30 PM on a Saturday evening easily.
Tony’s Di Napoli is a NYC Italian American restaurant that has been around for a number of decades. It’s probably comparable to Buca Di Beppo or Maggiano, but it is less of a domestic chain than a NYC chain. They serve family style portions, and they have both half and full sizes of many of their pastas. This particular location is located in Times Square, and normally I shy away from this. So how did it go?
This is the first outdoor restaurant experience in the COVID-19 temperament where we had waiter service. We were walking around looking for something to eat with a friend, and this was nestled in a small street with a group of restaurants. It had space and tents set up to span all of their tables. I won’t talk much about the ambiance at this particular restaurant because I loathe eating outdoors in humid NYC heat in the city. So let’s go straight to the food.
Astoria in the last few months has seen an uptick on Asian restaurants that aren’t fusion and are more authentic. This one just happens to be on Broadway near my partner’s old neighborhood. We’ve been around this area before going to eat Shanghainese food. Today, it’s for noodles.
This was the braised beef tendon. It was marinated in chili oil, garlic, scallions, sesame oil, and other things that I probably missed. It’s a very traditional cold appetizer dish. The beef tendon was actually quite crunchy but cooked properly and thoroughly. I’ve been to Chinese restaurants in NYC where the tendons were hard as rock. But here, it’s pretty clear that it was cooked thoroughly.
As usual, the North Williamsburg area is a pretty hot spot for restaurants to eat at. I had lived in this area for about 2 years, but I still come back time to time to get a haircut. Usually after the haircut, I’ll check out something. I’ve been looking for a decent pho place that is close enough to me such that I don’t have to travel to Flushing.
Typically when we walk north on 6th ave towards Trader Joe’s for groceries, we stop by Cava across the street for a snack. We saw this seemingly new interesting restaurant opened with no one in it. The space is very bright, modern, and definitely has a Japanese cafe-chic vibe to it. This dry “ramen” place just opened along 6th Avenue between 20th and 21st Street.
This is another one of those “pick X of this and Y of that” type of restaurant except the theme here is Japanese.
What’s nice about Thai food is they are rarely bad, and they are very consistent even at different restaurants. We were in Cobble Hill after an errand, and this place was relatively close by and open for a late afternoon dinner.
We got 2 different Thai teas. The first was the regular Thai tea and the other is Lychee Thai tea. Both were pretty good. The lychee might be sweet for some, but it tastes literally like the fruit.
Looking on Yelp, we found that this new Argentine restaurant opened up on Vernon Blvd pretty recently in Long Island City. The menu has a lot of interesting and affordable meat dishes. It’s great that this street is opening a lot of cool restaurants of various cuisines. It appears they have a patio in the back that would be pretty awesome once the weather warms up. I can imagine this place being a super popular hot spot in the foreseeable future.
It seems when it comes to hot pot, East Village is a thriving destination. Usually people try to go to 99 Favor Taste because it also has grillable BBQ meats in addition to hot pots. When people don’t have reservations and are quoted a 2 hour wait time, the next logical option is to look for another hot pot place which just happens to be this place since it’s a few streets down.