Le Bernardin is a three Michelin Star restaurant in New York City that primarily deals with seafood. The head chef is Eric Ripert, who is very well known in the higher end spectrum of the culinary world. We actually saw him on the floor with a mask on talking to some of the wait staff. This particular occasion was for a birthday celebration. Our reservation was at 5 PM, and it had to be reserved a month in advance. The spinning doors don’t actually open till 5 PM sharp, so there wasn’t too much of a benefit to arrive before.

For this memorial weekend, we wanted to go somewhere out of town, but we had to cancel plans including non refundable bus passes. I’ve been watching the Cooking Channel as my background noise, and they had an episode of steak. My partner hadn’t been to Keen’s, and I thought this would be a great time to introduce them to it. I had been here back in 2018 for the first time, and it had a very delicious, if not the best, prime rib. Dinner reservations were difficult to make, so we opted for a lunch reservation instead which was quite easy.

Summary

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. This one looked like a good candidate. This restaurant, if it weren’t for the outdoors setup, would’ve been a little difficult to spot because it’s in the basement of a building.

Summary

We were visiting the Edge, which is a touristy spot where you can see the NYC area from 100 floors above, and in this COVID environment, it’s been hard to find some decent outdoor restaurants. We had passed by this place, which is a Jose Andres restaurant, and it seemed interesting. It’s a quasi-indoor place in that you’re eating in the building, but the area feels like you’re in a garage. The garage doors open facing outside, and there are plenty of fans to circulate air. We saw that they spaced out all the tables distantly from each other, so it seemed fine to sit down and eat. This is the Spanish Diner at Mercado Little Spain in the Hudson Yards block.

Summary

For this special outing, Yakitori Torishin has been on my list ever since I moved to New York City. I finally had a chance to try this for the girlfriend’s birthday.

We wanted the regular yakitori experience as opposed to the select counter experience. The reason is that I just couldn’t imagine the value from yakitori at literally double the cost of a regular omakase. They brought us into the back room, and we were still seated in front of the chefs.

Summary

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.

Summary

If you’re around the Rockafeller area and are looking for pretty decent Italian food at a not overly expensive price, this restaurant might be a good candidate. It is located on the 2nd floor of the Nordstrom NYC flagship store near the watches section. We walked in without reservations around 5:30 PM, and we were seated at the bar fairly quickly.

Because Nordstrom doesn’t have the drinks menu online, I’m hoping my memory serves me well. The left is a mai thai, and the right is a mezcal cocktail. The mai thai was doused with passion fruit liqueur which is why I got it in the first place. It wasn’t too strong, and everything tasted very tropically and subtle. The mezcal cocktail had a slight smokey flavor to it. I don’t remember what else was in this though, but it definitely was sweet.

Summary

We were around Central Park near the southern side, and this was on my list of restaurants to try. This new-ish Chinese (Shanghainese) restaurant is located where Joe’s Shanghai used to be in Midtown. It’s not too far from the Apple flagship store.

The stir fry snow pea leaf was mighty tasty. You can taste the subtleness of that wine, and the vegetable itself was tender and delicious.

Summary

We were near Rockafeller and were craving some bar like food. Not too far around the corner is this new-ish bar. Walking in, the interior is very open and seems pretty nice. There are a lot of tables that you can stand or sit on a high stool for drinks. You can tell it’s a pretty social atmosphere. But let’s get to the food.

This is the Detroit pepperoni pan pizza. The thickness of this was rather thin, almost New York like. Flavor wise, it was pretty salty but pretty decent. I wish they were more liberal with the pepperoni, and I am not sure I’m a fan of the thinness of this. I think my mark for great Detroit pan style pizza is Emmy Squared, and this one kind of misses its mark.

Summary

We were just around the block looking to meet a friend for a drink and some bar food at a nearby restaurant. Turns out that restaurant was booked due to a football game, so we had to hunt for another one. This restaurant for whatever reason was dead quiet but opened at the time.

The cured Long Island duck breast came with pomegranate molasses, collard greens, and kabocha squash purée. The duck breast was super tender and crispy. My only gripe was that it was very salty.