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.
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.
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.
A friend was in town, and I saw that Tim Ho was near their hotel. This place was always on my list to try given that it had received Michelin recognition at its Hong Kong location. Given I’ve eaten at numerous dim sum places already, they tout themselves as the dim sum specialists, so I already have high expectations.
I don’t remember the drink on the left, but the right was some type of mango cococnut slush. It was pretty good as it wasn’t too sweet.
Normally we don’t care about brunches, but this restaurant was surprisingly good and not too expensive. Located in West Village near the “Friends” place and some touristy spots, this is a very quaint and small shop. If I recall, it only has like at most 5 tables with counters spread throughout the place. This place is small, so set your expectations accordingly.
We ordered a glass of orange juice and a One Night Stand. There wasn’t anything particular about the orange juice other than they put ice cubes in it which I thought was weird. However, the One Night Stand was actually pretty refreshing. It’s tequila, watermelon, chili agave, and lime. It has that little spicy kick to it, but not too much. The watermelon rounds it out very nicely.
For this special outing, Yakitori Torishin has been on my list ever since I moved to New York City. I finally had a chance to try this for the girlfriend’s birthday.
We wanted the regular yakitori experience as opposed to the select counter experience. The reason is that I just couldn’t imagine the value from yakitori at literally double the cost of a regular omakase. They brought us into the back room, and we were still seated in front of the chefs.
Korean BBQ in NYC is often straight forward. If you want to eat it, you go to Koreatown for a safe bet. If you go away from Koreatown, you risk eating somewhere that may not satisfy that lust. Perhaps the meat would not be as good, or the side dishes would be awful.
Fortunately this place in Chelsea was actually pretty decent.
I definitely want to preface that the ventilation in this restaurant is not good despite the ducts over the grills, so your clothes will smell.
French dips, let alone good ones, are pretty nonexistent in NYC. I’ve had a good one up in Upper West Side at Jacob’s Pickles, but other that I usually get my cravings by making my own. We just got out of watching the movie theater, and we were reasonably close to this new location. The chef used to work as an executive chef at 4 Charles Prime Rib in the East Village, and they picked a fantastic location on St. Marks between 1st/2nd Ave in the East Village.
We actually have eaten here before, but we totally forgot to take pictures and document. From the best recollection, we remembered this place as being one of our favorite Brazilian restaurants in NYC. So we decided to visit this again to document.
The maracuja caipirinha we recalled being really good our first time doing. Ordered it again, and it was nothing but a disappointment. The tartness of the passion fruit tasted sour and borderlinen rotten. There was no sweetness, and it tasted very watered down and unflavored. We asked the waitress to bring it back to the bartender because of this. The bartender created another one, and it was slightly better but still didn’t taste fresh.