We’ve been to Boucherie before on 6th Ave near the West Village. We expected the food here to be similar but not the same as that location.

For my first visit, I was craving for prime rib, and disappointingly, all the other places in the city were pretty expensive at $70 and up. For subsequent visits, it was decided out of convenience because the food was pretty consistent, and they have a decent pre-theater menu for the value.

Valentine’s Day … it’s yet another day of the year to spend more money on your partner! Valerie is a restaurant located in Midtown about 3 streets up from Bryant Park. My partner was craving crab cakes and aside from ordering from Jimmy’s Famous Seafood, I was having a lot of trouble finding something. They gave me a list, and I noticed that there was crab cake on this menu. I had no idea what to expect on an early Saturday evening when we arrived.

We planned to meet my partner’s friend on the wonderful Roosevelt Island. For those that haven’t been to Roosevelt Island, there are literally 3 different ways to get there: the F train, the tram (cable car), or transportation via bridge from the Astoria side. With the hopefully slim possibility of living there, my partner wanted to meet their friend and also check out local food delights. Zhongzhong Noodles had been on my list for quite a while, so I figured now is a good time to try it out.

Au Cheval is well known restaurant based out of Chicago. They specialize in elevated burgers and American dishes. When they opened a New York City location, there were crazy lines out the door. The bigger brother to this restaurant is “4 Charles” which specializes in prime rib. Both the burger and prime rib sandwich at Au Cheval are also found at “4 Charles”. I don’t have the patience to book a “4 Charles” reservation and pay the crazy insane prices for steak, so I thought I’d try some of their offerings here. Because they charge $2.49 plus tax, per person, for a reservation on Resy. It’s pretentious, but that did allow us to secure a reservation easily.

Following our Disney World trip and since I started going back to the office, we are starting to do our Friday date nights again. This restaurant appeared in the local news as a brand new restaurant, so we thought we’d give it a try before the crowds started discovering this and also because we missed NYC food after being in Disney World for a week. The restaurant is a partnership between restauranteur John McDonald of Mercer Street Hospitality with partnership with Chef Justin Bazdarich (Oxomoco). We recalled we had a great time at Oxomoco for their brunch.

One of our traditions that will be coming back soon is eating out on Fridays after work. We’ve been exploring the heart of midtown area and trying to walk into restaurants without reservations. We tried to go to one of the Cuban restaurants, but unfortunately they required a 40 minute wait. This restaurant wasn’t too far away, but they did have prime rib on the menu. When we arrived, it seems there was some show going on, but we were able to sit at a small table in the bar area.

After an early afternoon along the mid section of Central Park at the Natural History museum, I was looking for specifically Mediterranean restaurants within a half mile walk. As usual, we did not have reservations in mind, so we were hoping we could walk in. Sorting by the “hot and new” on Yelp, we decided on Miriam which seemed to be a second Israeli location for the owners. Fortunately, the restaurant was quite open around 4:45 PM, and we were able to walk in. If we had came closer to 6 PM, it probably would’ve been much more difficult to secure a spot.

We saw this restaurant’s opening relatively recently on an NYC openings blog. I wasn’t sure what exactly was the “Genesis House” or what “curated by Onjium” meant, but I figure post pandemic this was an excellent opportunity to make a reservation for something new to please my gourmand syndrome. The Genesis house is kind of interesting. The first floor is a showroom of Genesis vehicles where you can sit in the cars and talk to the different reps. The cars look nice, but this show room felt a little out of place for me. On the second floor is the library and restaurant, and on the lower level is an open meeting area. I learned that Onjium is a 1 Michelin Star out in Seoul. They curated the menu here with both modern and Korean techniques in iconic Korean recipes.

We were around the Bloomingdales area running some errands back and forth around the Midtown East area and decided to take the risk of looking for a restaurant without making reservations since we normally eat dinner fairly early. This Quality Italian seems to be from the same owners of Quality Meats and Quality Bistro which are on my list. Quality Italian is a modern take on the Italian American steakhouse tradition, and the prices are probably on the mid to high range.

We had to go to the Upper East to return some items, and of course that allowed us to also explore some restaurants around that area. I recall Mission Ceviche having a stall in the Gainsvoort/Chelsea food hall, but I never actually tried it. They actually have a few locations in the city, and fortunately we were near their Upper East Side location. My partner is a ceviche fanatic, so we thought we’d take a look.