For our anniversary, I camped on Tock to make reservations for Atomix. Here, they actually have 2 different menus: a bar tasting menu and a Chef’s counter tasting menu. I actually made reservations for both, with some thought that I was going to sell the bar one because I thought they would be similar. However after some research, I realized they are actually 2 distinct experiences. I ended up keeping both reservations, and so there will be two distinct reviews for Atomix.

The Reading Room is a restaurant that caught my eye on Yelp’s “New and Hot” list. The menu is fairly small, simple, but seemed like it could be a good one. I’ve been looking for restaurants around my work area that I could potentially refer others for drinks or a not too expensive dinner. This restaurant is located in the back of The Gotham Hotel on 46th between Madison and Fifth Avenue.

This is either a blessing or a curse of the reservation system Tock. When the time comes to make reservations for super hot restaurants, you literally have less than 2 seconds to grab a reservation spot when they become available. I mistakenly grabbed a bar reservation thinking it was the Chef’s Counter, and I was mildly disappointed. However, I refreshed the reservation system about 10 minutes later, and I noticed there were an opening for counter seating the following week.

I cannot recall the last time I’ve cracked open crab shells and eaten a huge chunk of crab meat. In Los Angeles, I used to go to a lot of seafood buffets, and they would always have a plethora of snow crab legs that you could eat for hours on end. We decided today to venture out to this all you can eat seafood buffet in the city. We were able to walk in with no reservations for 2 around 5:30 PM on a Friday.

When people say Manhattan has practically endless restaurants, it’s quite true. There’s not enough time, money, and health to try all the different restaurants out there. For this visit into the city, we decided to go after yakitori since that was fairly close around the area we were at. We have had previously been to Torishin, a former Michelin 1-star, so I wanted to show my partner different yakitori places that were less upscaled.

For New Year’s Eve, we were fortunate to book this restaurant in Midtown East at the very last minute. This was always on our list since outdoor dining was a thing as the pictures of its settings looked quite appealing. Most tables have their own electric heater that sat directly above the table, so it wasn’t too cold compared to other places. For what it’s worth, it was in the high 30s with some wind chills.

Unlike the other cuisines in NYC, Persian food is not something that we actively seek out. However, we often are around this area shopping at the now-closed Bed Bath & Beyond and tend to look for restaurants that are very close. This restaurant was something we surprisingly haven’t tried, so we checked it out. I actually haven’t had Persian food since I moved from LA back in 2016, so I am curious to relive those moments again.

Today was our second anniversary, and it’s somewhat difficult to find a decent restaurant that has an outdoor garden that is away from the crowd. After staying up till 4 AM looking for one, I finally found one that was decent. The garden seating area is actually in the back of the restaurant, so there’s very little foot traffic from random people. Luckily the weather wasn’t hot at all.

This place is basically chirashi haven. It’s miso soup. The uni don came with hamachi and spicy tuna and shiso leaf. I wasn’t too much of a fan of the spicy tuna compared to some other places, but it was still pretty good. The spicy tuna had a very particular flavor that was masked of course when you use soy sauce with wasabi. Otherwise, the fish tasted pretty fresh overall.

We were looking for a decent steak place that was walkable from where we were. The best steak house in my opinion in the city is Keen’s Steakhouse, so expectations were set pretty low. This venue is fairly nice. It’s close to Smith and Wollensky and located inside some hotel. This was one of the few steakhouses at this time that had hardly any people, so one can only think that this place wouldn’t be that good.