The Dynamo Room is a relatively new steakhouse located in the Penn District, right next to Madison Square Garden and in the heart of the area. The whole area feels like Times Square, considering how there are a lot of police presence with a lot of crowds. The restaurant seats 200 people, and I was easily able to make a reservation at 5:30 PM for 4 people without any issues.

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.

Today was another Broadway showing that we had to attend. Our theater district restaurant pool is thinning a bit, so this one was somewhat difficult to locate. It reminds me of a Midtown staple type of restaurant that is very friendly to the theater crowd, and it’s not hard to get in. We were able to walk in on a Saturday evening around 5 PM without any issues. From their website:

Becco was on our list for a while. This restaurant in the Theater District was always full around theater times, so of course, that’s naturally alluring. It was first opened in 1993 by Lidia Bastianich and her son, Joe, who you might recognize from the U.S. version of the MasterChef series. The Yelp ratings of the food seem surprisingly low compared to the Google counterpart, so that increase our curiosity.

Chef Andrew Carmellini has some pretty good restaurants (NoHo Hospitality) that we’ve been to. Some recent ones that we really enjoyed include Cafe Carmellini and Carne Mare. Locanda Verde opened a second location in the Hudson Yards area. This is his ode to urban Italian cuisine, and we wanted to try this out because the exterior seemed very nice. I made a reservation for 2 for 5:15 on a Friday evening without any issues.

We went into the city to watch a broadway show, and I had to look for a restaurant in the area without worrying about reservations. I stumbled onto this Hell’s Kitchen Italian restaurant that seemed to have pretty decent menu items. We were able to walk in around 5:00 PM on a Friday evening pretty easily, and there wasn’t much foot traffic at all. We were seated next to the window and had a very casual, quick dinner.

We finished watching a matinee of a Broadway show, and we’re running out of desirable early dinner options in the Midtown area. This one was on my list for quite some time as it looked like a restaurant that was a no frills izakaya type restaurant. This restaurant is about 2 doors down from Valerie, a pretty popular Midtown restaurant. We were able to walk in around 4:30 PM on a Saturday without any issues.

Gui caught my attention because it offered a baked Alaska and prime rib. What I did not realize was that this restaurant had some folks with a track record of good Korean foods. Chef Sung Chul Shim comes from Kochi and Mari. Pastry chef, Sarah Smith, comes from many fine kitchens including Le Bernardin and Le Rock. The reservation was very easy to reserve for a 5:15 PM dinner on a Friday night.

We had won another theater tickets for this Sunday, so we looked for a place nearby. My partner desired Peruvian food again, specifically lomo saltado. The best lomo saltado place we’ve ever had was actually Mario’s in Los Angeles, and we’ve been struggling to find a comparable place, especially in New York City. We walked in on a late Sunday afternoon without issues, and we were seated promptly. Looking over the menu, they had your typical Peruvian options.

We had a show this evening, and this “crab house” just recently opened in Manhattan. This originated from a Flushing stall, and their specialty is crab roe over rice or noodle. We were able to walk in on a Saturday evening without reservations. The social media circuit really raved about this dish by showing off the roe, so we decided to try it. I figured there was no need to make reservations since Manhattan Midtown Chinese restaurants are usually pretty easy to get into.