It’s yet another Friday, and my partner had to pick up some items around the southeast part of Central Park. This area is fairly close to the Plaza Hotel and the flagship Apple store. This restaurant was on my eyes for a while, but my partner hadn’t built their tolerance or appreciation for Italian food until recently. Fortunately, I finally had a chance to suggest this restaurant as our Friday getaway.

I don’t know much about Piccola Cucina other than that it’s real close to Bloomingdales in Midtown. When we tried to stop in at 5:30 PM as a walk-in many months ago, they told us there was a 2 hour wait. Since we knew today we were going to be around the area, I saw they had a few openings and quickly booked a reservation for 6 PM for 2. This review is for the Midtown Uptown location.

We were in the Midtown area shopping yet again. The previous night we went to Serafina, which was pretty awful. Luckily we had more choices, and this restaurant was nearby. It caught my eye because it had a nice indoor patio area that was lit by natural light similarly to The Milling Room. The menu seemed reasonable as well as the price, so maybe there can be some value found here.

We had to go to the Upper East to return some items, and of course that allowed us to also explore some restaurants around that area. I recall Mission Ceviche having a stall in the Gainsvoort/Chelsea food hall, but I never actually tried it. They actually have a few locations in the city, and fortunately we were near their Upper East Side location. My partner is a ceviche fanatic, so we thought we’d take a look.

This restaurant is very close to the Bloomingdales along Lexington in the Upper East side. Surprisingly it has been here for a while, but we seldom come to this neighborhood to grab food. It just so happens we were on an errand run, so my partner was able to grab an early reservation. This is one of the more price friendly restaurants of Jean Georges although it arguably is still on the pricy side.

We had walked over the Queensboro bridge to do some casual shopping at the Bloomingdales on Lexington on the Monday of a Memorial Day weekend. Surprisingly, there weren’t many people out and about probably due to people escaping town. Because this was around lunch time, we decided not to trek too far from the department store. This Japanese restaurant was connected indoors to the first floor of the department store. On the outside, they had private transparent glass huts with their own heaters, but we decided to eat indoors.

We came here on a date night to do the dinner and jazz thing. We purchased our tickets online, then head over. With the tickets, there’s a required minimum of 1 drink per person if you’re not having dinner, or if you are having dinner, there is a required 1 entree per person sans appetizer. On this night, it was the Harold Mabern Trio. The cocktails were ok. It’s been a while, so I don’t quite remember exactly what these were.

This place is located in the Upper East, and arguably walkable from the MET. The spiedino di gamberetti was OK to me. Nothing really memorable, but they gave you a decent amount of shrimp. The antipasto misto was actually pretty good, and they gave a decent variety of meats and cheese. For 2 people, this was quite filling. The pappardelle al ragu di vitello was good as expected. The pasta could have been cooked just a tad less, but the sauce it sat in was pretty good.

The food here was just like one of those casual fast food centric places. It’s on Seamless (food delivery service), so enough said. The churrasco was $18 and was mildly satisfying. They gave you a decent amount of meat, and it was quite tender when ordered “medium rare”. It came with this mayonnaise like green sauce, that had only a mild kick to it. With this, I opted for french fries and pineapple on the side.

The brunch feast seems like a good thing. For $40, you get to pick 4 tapas, 2 main entrees (paella counts as 2), a dessert, and unlimited mimosas/sangrias. The spanish omelette (tortilla española) tasted similar to a breakfast quiche. Nothing too memorable about it. The bread with tomato with ham (pan con tomate con jamón) was ok. The albóndigas was nothing special for me. Basically lamb meatballs with marinara.