Papa San was on my list for a while, especially from the folks that did Llama Inn. It’s an izakaya (think of Japanese tapas), made with a Peruano-Japanese influence. It’s an interesting blend of cuisines, and it’s not uncommon. In Peru, they do have a lot of Asian influences, such as lomo saltado, where they use soy sauce in the dish. We made a reservation for 2 for 5:00 PM on a Sunday evening very easily. This is located very close to Hudson Yards.
Chica & The Don is a new Latin restaurant that opened in the Flatiron district. Despite their Yelp site pointing to Flatbush, it really is located in Manhattan. When you walk in, the restaurant has a long corridor to the main dining area. They just opened 3 weeks ago, so I was interested in checking this out before the hype were to build up. We were able to make a reservation relatively easy for 5:45 PM on a Friday early evening.
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.
This is located right next to the water near restaurants like Maiella and American Brass. Whenever we try walk-in, they always tells us it’s an hour wait even when there’s no one outside. Since we didn’t have anything else close by that we wanted to try, we were able to book a reservation for an early Saturday dinner again.
For some reason this restaurant is very popular with a large latin clientele. People will have massive birthday parties or get togethers.
A friend was in town around the Hudson Yards area, and we wanted to look for something around the area. The menu here looked pretty decent, and it was on my bookmarks for quite a while.
The bread came with some type of tomato olive oil medley. It reminded me of bruschetta toppings but more akin to diced tomatoes out of a jar. The sauce itself was alright.