This is a restaurant from the same people that brought Maiella. Even though that restaurant was modern Italian, this one was more New American. It sits across the Gantry park near the Hunters Point library. Our first visit was on a Sunday, prior to the day that New York City had to shutdown dining in restaurants due to the coronavirus. Because people weren’t really out and about, the restaurant had many empty tables.
As we’re exploring the Long Island City neighborhood, this was a pretty good find. It’s on Vernon Blvd where there are a ton of neighborhood restaurants. About 2 blocks away is a park that is in vicinity of the Long Island City sign and lets you view Manhattan from the east. We’ve been here a few times, and we always notice a decent amount of locals that continue to stop by. It’s relatively easy to eat here without needing to make a reservation.
Tonight was another venture out to the area around Vernon Blvd. There are so many restaurants here to try. This one here is an Italian restaurant near Gantry park. There are a lot of cars for some reason compared to other parts of Long Island City. The restaurant was able to accommodate us as a pair of walk-ins at around 6:30 PM on a Saturday evening easily.
This is a place along Ditmars Blvd in Astoria, relatively close to Taverna Kyclades. There is a lot of interesting outdoor setup on this street. The menu itself appears fairly simple, but this place had been highly recommended to us for the easy going vibe. For this COVID environment, the tables are organized north to south along the side street instead of the main street of Ditmars. It definitely felt a little safer.
In a forever hunt for the best lomo saltado in NYC, this is another place we tried. This restaurant is located near Vernon where all the restaurants are, and it was relatively easy to walk in without reservations.
I got the passion fruit juice with water which was basically passion fruit syrup with water and crushed ice. It was pretty good, but it was pretty obvious that you could probably make this at home. It was neither sweet or sour, so they chose a good water/syrup ratio here.
This place is across the street from Food Cellar. It’s nestled in a garage and used to serve a lot of steak dishes. The menu has changed into a more casual patio like experience (I am guessing just for the summer). When we arrived, there was no table service. Instead you have to go to the counter and place your order there. The menus are shown via QRCode. After you place your order, you carry the utensils, dishes, and drinks back to your table. The waiter will serve the dishes, so you don’t have to go pick up that. When you order, you (can) leave with them your credit card to open a tab. When you check out, they will tell you that gratuity is already included.
Astoria in the last few months has seen an uptick on Asian restaurants that aren’t fusion and are more authentic. This one just happens to be on Broadway near my partner’s old neighborhood. We’ve been around this area before going to eat Shanghainese food. Today, it’s for noodles.
This was the braised beef tendon. It was marinated in chili oil, garlic, scallions, sesame oil, and other things that I probably missed. It’s a very traditional cold appetizer dish. The beef tendon was actually quite crunchy but cooked properly and thoroughly. I’ve been to Chinese restaurants in NYC where the tendons were hard as rock. But here, it’s pretty clear that it was cooked thoroughly.
Looking on Yelp, we found that this new Argentine restaurant opened up on Vernon Blvd pretty recently in Long Island City. The menu has a lot of interesting and affordable meat dishes. It’s great that this street is opening a lot of cool restaurants of various cuisines. It appears they have a patio in the back that would be pretty awesome once the weather warms up. I can imagine this place being a super popular hot spot in the foreseeable future.
We continue to explore the neighborhood in Long Island City. This street is littered with all sorts of restaurants, and the recent one that got our interest was this Cuban themed restaurant. We were able to walk in without any reservations on a Friday night around 8 PM.
With our meal, we were served bread with a chimichurri variant. The bread was lukewarm and not toasted much at all, but the inside was soft.
Here is another nice neighborhood spot off Vernon Blvd in Long Island City. Reviews seem to rave about how good this neighborhood sushi spot is, so we decided to give it a try.
The peach sparkling sake was relatively inexpensive and mighty tasty. The peach flavor tasted artificial, but it was still pretty good. It felt like drinking champagne without the heavy alcohol taste and with that artificial peach sweetener.