Now that I have a new camera to play with, we’ve been trying to make an effort to travel around the city to practice taking pictures and learning more about the camera. At some point, I’ll start another website sharing and expressing what I got. For now, we were hungry in the Dumbo area, and the bathroom lines to wash your hands were long in the public restroom area within the Timeout Market section. My partner was really irked, so we decided to just walk into Cecconi’s to see if we can be seated. The outdoor section had a wait of upwards of 50 minutes, but the indoor seating was all ready to go. We were seated immediately at 4:30 PM on a Saturday late afternoon without issues.

We had some tickets to attend one of those Fever “Candlelight” concert events that was located at a church right next to the “Court St” R-stop in Brooklyn. There was not too many options in terms of food within close vicinity. I looked at the prices for this soup dumpling place, and to my surprise, Din Soup Dumplings seemed not bad. My partner was also in a dumpling mood, so it was convenient to go check this place out. This place is located right across the street from the church on the second level above another Chinese restaurant. We were able to walk in without reservations for 2 at around 5:30 PM on a Friday.

We finally made it to The River Cafe, which was a restaurant we wanted to go for a while. This restaurant sits right next to the East River, right under the Brooklyn Bridge. We made a reservation for a table of 7 at 5 PM on a Friday night. The dinner consists of primarily 3 courses, which has a fixed price of $195.

The River Cafe has 1 Michelin Star and first received it in 2010.

Gage and Tollner has been on my list for quite a while now. I was casually browsing for restaurants with baked alaska, and this had shown up high on people’s list. Whenever I had tried to look at reservations, it was pretty booked. I was very lucky to have found an open reservation for 2 at 5 PM on a Sunday the night before. So how did it go?

Hanon is located in the North Williamsburg area and is literally across the street on Union St. from the Metropolitan G stop and diner. It has been awarded the Michelin 2021 Bib Gourmand award. It originated in Kamakura, Japan in the summer of 2018. I hadn’t heard about this restaurant much at all and stumbled onto this through Yelp’s Hot & New filters. I wanted to try this restaurant out because the pictures of the udon sets look quite interesting, and the price point was pretty reasonable.

North Williamsburg just keeps on growing and gentrifying. I had lived here when I first moved to NYC, and 5+ years later, there are even more restaurants within such a small area. Similar to Manhattan, many restaurants are rotating ownership and leases. This restaurant is a relatively new latin fusion restaurant that had opened back in September 2021. It sits very close to McCarren park a few doors away from one of my favorite cheese steak places, Federoff’s Steaks. Because we were done with our errands very early, we were able to walk in easy at 4:30 PM on a Sunday.

For my partner’s birthday, I decided on this 2 Michelin Star restaurant located in the Williamsburg area. What appealed to me originally about this was that it was not just another French restaurant. French cuisine is great, but there are so many high end French restaurants around the city. Perhaps I am getting a little burnt out of having the same French tastes over and over, so I wanted something that was less normal. I’ve never really had high end Scandinavian, so I thought today could be a good day. And to add, I had heard that they have non-alcoholic (juice) pairings, so I was excited to check this out.

We have not tried too many Brooklyn restaurants near the Barclays Center area for quite some time due to the pandemic. On this early brisk and semi-cold night, we had an interactive theater outing over at the One Hanson Place building in Brooklyn. After the event was over, a friend that we met at the event impromptly invited us to meet his friend at this restaurant. This was less than a mile away, and since we didn’t have other plans, we decided to try it out.

My partner is fanatical about ceviche, and I am fanatical about lomo saltado. Our level of comparison is Mario’s in Los Angeles, and there has yet been a tolerable comparison to that so far. There are not too many Peruvian options in the Williamsburg area. We’ve been to Chimu Bistro which was decent, and Llama Inn was a little too upscale. On this super sunny and muddy day after getting my hair chopped and despite all the plethora of options for anything but Peruvian, we decided to check out this restaurant based on recommendations. This is the second location of this restaurant, the first being in Maspeth.

Summary

This Korean BBQ restaurant has been in North Williamsburg for a while. I’ve always wanted to go to this, but prior to the pandemic, it was always easier to go to Koreatown since I was always in Manhattan. We arrived here at an early rainy Sunday afternoon. They follow COVID protocol very well, and there were very few people inside. The waitress took our temperature and address as usual, and then we were seated after. The tables are separated by plastic guards. Let’s move onto the food.