Michael Mina is an award winning chef and restaurateur that currently runs and operates over 40 restaurants worldwide. He opened this restaurant in the JW Marriott Essex House, right across from Central Park south and near Columbus Circle. This is his love letter to the classic American steakhouse. Bourbon Steak has multiple locations in the United States, so it’s not an entirely new restaurant. I picked this restaurant particularly because of their prix fixe menu that seems to give a pretty good spread of what this restaurant has to offer.

The Musket Room has been around for a while, and it is located close to the Broadway/Lafayette train in Manhattan. Chef Mary Attea is the head chef of this restaurant, and according to the Michelin Guide, the kitchen is predominantly women. We picked this restaurant to try for tonight primarily because the menu looked like a slightly different take on New American than what we were used to. I was easily able to book a reservation for 2 for 5:30 PM on a Friday evening a few days in advance.

No, this isn’t the front of Leitão but a pic of the back. I stumbled onto this restaurant looking for Portuguese or Peruvian restaurants for our Friday dinners. My partner wanted this as the option for this evening, so I made a reservation for 2 at 5:30 PM on a nice Friday evening. The restaurant itself is located about a 0.5 mile (0.8 km) walk from the West 4th subway station. I didn’t take a picture of the front because it was difficult to take pics of the restaurant without having people’s faces directly in the way.

We won yet another lottery for one of the theater shows, so we were hoping to walk into Wondee Thai. As expected, there was a line outside and a wait inside, so we didn’t want to gamble missing the show if we had waited. We instead opted to walk a block south to this restaurant which had no patrons. We were able to walk in for 2 at 5:30 PM on a Saturday night without reservations. There seemed to be 2 sections to this restaurant, a left and a right. We were seated on the left on a small table with stools.

My partner adores Peruvian food, primarily for the ceviche. We’ve been to a handful of Peruvian in the city, but this is one of the first that I saw marketing itself to be more on the higher end. The head chef of this restaurant, Rodrigo Fernandini, came from Chiclayo (Peru) and opened this back in late 2023. We were able to make a reservation for 2 at 5:30 PM on a Friday very easily without trouble. We were seated along the side of the room right next to the kitchen.

In our quest to find all the “Baked Alaska” restaurants in NYC, this was one that I was surprised to have it priced reasonably. Looking at the menu, everything was affordable compared to the rest of Manhattan. I’ll be honest that I have never heard of this restaurant, and this came up randomly in my search. We easily made a reservation for 2 for 5:30 PM on a Friday.

Odre recently opened a little over a month ago, and it was on my list to checkout. Similar to other Korean small-tasting restaurants, this offered an inexpensive tasting of Korean rustic-style cooking. The restaurant is part of the Hand Hospitality network, which includes Nonono, Cho Dang Gol, Jua, Okdongsik, and many more. I was able to make a reservation fairly easy a few days prior to our visit for a 5:30 PM Friday evening dinner.

We won the theater lottery to watch another play in the Theater district. This was on my list for some reason, and it was conveniently very close to the theater. The menu seemed quintessential Italian American type food, and as a bonus, they also have a 3-course theater menu prix fixe for $55 per person. I was able to make a reservation pretty easily for 2 for 5:30 PM on a Wednesday night.

We had previously been to The Bar at The Modern, where the value to taste ratio was quite good. In an effort to knock another off our list, we booked The Kitchen experience. On the other side of the bar, there was a dining room with a lot of natural light of the garden of the Museum of Modern Arts. This area served a more extensive tasting menu with wine pairing options. The kitchen is the same, except if you book during lunch, you have access to the dinner tasting menu as well, i.e. the full experience. We made a reservation for 12:00 PM on a Saturday without much difficulties as long as you make the reservation when it opens up.

Mari is yet another seaweed hand-roll type restaurant in a very crowded space in New York City. The difference from many others though is that this is Korean-centric, and it has earned 1 Michelin Star in both 2022 and 2023. This restaurant is the same team as Kochi, which is also near the area in the Theater District. Since my partner was attending another event, I was looking at this restaurant because perhaps it’d be very solo friendly, and it was quite easy to make a 1-seat reservation the night prior.