Dinosaur “Bar-B-Que” is a New York state BBQ set fo restaurants that first opened in 1983 as a concession stand near Albany, NY for bikers. Since, they’ve expanded to a few more locations, including upstate NY as well as NYC. We’ve been to the Brooklyn location a few years ago, and we remembered it being pretty good. To relive our memories, we decided to visit again on a Sunday afternoon.

Boqueria is an east coast Spanish tapas chain. The food here is quintessential Spanish shareables, including large paellas. We originally ate here with some friends in the Upper East, but we have also tried this restaurant in Flatiron. Reservations are fairly easy to secure, and it does get busy during core hours. If you have a decent sized party, this is probably a decent restaurant to bring folks that might be into family style sharing.

We came here around 8:30 PM on a rather cold Saturday evening. Typically there is a long line outside, but today people were crowded and bundled up inside. I put my name down for 2. The wait was approximately 40-50 minutes. We had contemplated leaving when we heard the wait time, but we decided to power through and wait. It was worth it. On July 1, 2023, we visited this restaurant again, and it has moved from it’s previous location.

I wrote back in 2019 that this is one of my favorite Brazilian spots because the food and drinks were pretty good. I revisited this with some coworkers to introduce them to Brazilian food again. Keep in mind that this visit is post COVID, so the menu has changed a bit. Gone are the batidas, but fortunately they had other standard Brazilian dishes to order. It is located in “Little Brazil” in Midtown which is literally very few restaurants situated on half the block.

The caipirinhas were decent. As usual I dislike the coconut flavored ones but appreciate the passion fruit ones. The feijoada was the actual star here. It’s much better than some of the other Brazilian places I’ve been to. The meat was plentiful, and the flavor is very good. The bife acebolado was ordered medium rare, and it was cooked medium to medium well. I don’t understand why Brazilian restaurants have problems cooking the meat less than butchering it again.

It’s a bit of a trek, but it’s a much cheaper place for Peking Duck. The whole peking duck was actually pretty good and reasonably price. The skin was a nice crisp, and the duck was pleasantly fat. The fried shrimp was mistakenly ordered. We thought it was going to be the whole pepper salted shrimp with head. Even then, it was also decent. The other dishes, pea sprouts and yang chow fried rice, were not much different than other Chinese places.

This is the main site to the sister site Maison Pickle. The food here is really good, filling, and not too expensive. Of course, you have to get the pickles. For appetizers, we got 4 pickles (spicy, green beans, green tomatoes, and regular). We also got a side of fried pickles. I liked them all to be honest, and would love to get the carrots next time. Next, they had 3 different types of root beers on draft.

Walked in on a Saturday at 7 PM with no reservations, and it was packed despite it being pretty frigid outside. Luckily, we got seats at the bar. The french onion soup was really good. The gruyere cheese was nice and toasty, and the beef broth with the onions wasn’t salty like typical french onion soups. The porterhouse of course was cooked a perfect medium rare. The strip side was preferred over the filet mignon.

The place was pretty dead when I went, but the pizza was excellent. In some ways I actually liked this more than Lombardis. Got a margarita pizza with pepperoni on it, and it was tasty. Would love to go back and try their stromboli or calzones as well. Overall Impression It’s a nice addition to the sparse Long Island City neighborhood. The pepperoni pizza quality and ingredients tasted really good.

Stumbled onto this just walking around. Was interested in salted pepper pork chops. All we got for a quick afternoon snack was just pan fried rice cakes with pork and the pork chops. Nothing to write home about, but the food was good for what we ordered. Note that we did not order the soup dumplings because frankly there are a gazillion other places to order this, so why would you order it here?