Clinton Street Baking Company is a very popular and well known destination for breakfast for decades. Word of mouth has mentioned that their pancakes and breakfast items have been delightful to eat. My party woke up early to park in line before the restaurant opening at 9 AM on a Saturday morning. It was definitely a struggle for me and my partner to arrive here from where we live, considering how annoying the subway schedules are on weekends.

What is tsukemen (つけ麺; pronounced “skee-men”)? It’s basically thick udon served cold with a side of a thick soup/broth for dipping. In Los Angeles, I frequented a place in Sawtelle near the Westside called “Tsujita” that also specialized in something similar. Okiboru recently opened in Manhattan, and it’s famed for being on Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list in Atlanta. They do not take reservations, so when we arrived at this location at 5:15 PM on a Friday, the line outside was about 10 parties ranging from 2 to 6 people per group.

It was my partner’s friend’s birthday, and they had asked for my partner to make a reservation to a Michelin Star restaurant that was not overwhelmingly expensive (< $120 per person before wine). My partner started looking for more contemporary cuisines, and stumbled onto this which was a bit below the radar of restaurants. I remembered looking at the menu a while back, and nothing really struck me as a must-have … but I’m always open to trying to prove myself wrong.

This is another restaurant on my list to go. I am not crazy about Italian, but I was hungry and wanted something pretty straight forward. The lasagna bolognese came with ground beef, béchamel, and tomato sauce. The pasta consisted of several very thin sheets with a thin layer of ground beef between each. Careful though, the lasagna was piping hot. It was pretty good, but I think I would’ve preferred more sauce and more cheese as an ode to the normal lasagnas you’d normally get.

This restaurant is a current trendy Thai restaurant that we had to wait a month for our reservations. It’s actually a little hard to spot your first time. It’s basically where people are standing around aimlessly and down the stairs in a very hard to see nook. If there are no people, look for a sign that has an arrow pointing down to the basement. We opted for the garden/patio seating, and luckily the weather was a perfect mid 70s temperature with very little to no breeze.

Typically on the weekends, both this location and the midtown location have a huge line of people waiting outside. And for what reason? We came on a Friday night around 5 PM, and there were probably at most 3 or 4 small groups of people in a big space. The cookie shake was a massive vanila-ish shake that had a bunch of sweets on it. It was good, but it is all sugar.

This place is right around the corner of Katz in the Ludlow Hotel. We sat in the patio area which is much nicer and quieter than indoors where everyone else is sitting. Starting off, they serve bread that seems to be freshly made for your table. The bread comes with some butter with oil on it, and it’s really good. We ordered 2 cocktails: Laboulaye which is the green one and Petite Socco which is the red one.

I don’t know much about this ramen spot other than it was on Chef’s Table, and how it really touched a lot of people’s hearts. So my review will be almost based solely on the food itself. The pork musubi bites were surprisingly good. Each bite is packed full of flavor, although I am rather doubtful that it’s worth $5 a piece. The Japanese fried chicken were an interesting spin on karaage.

Good date spot, small intimate venue.

This was pretty good. Definitely would come back here again when craving for duck rillettes and other charcuteries.