Berimbau do Brasil is a fairly well known West Village Brazilian restaurant. According to my first and last notes, I had tried the feijoada and the picanha, and both were excellent. My partner was craving a lot of this food recently, so we decided to try the new Midtown location of this restaurant. The menu has changed decently, but we were interested to see if the flavors were still consistent to their West Village location.
West Village is an area that we had walked through at times, but we never really tried many restaurants. Fortunately, it’s very accessible from both where my partner works and where I work. They picked this restaurant at the whim, and the menu looked pretty interesting and also straight forward. I was able to secure a reservation for 5:30 PM the day of without much difficulties. When you arrive here, there seems to be a little sibling restaurant, Aria Wine bar, across the street which seems to have a similar menu. Unfortunately, I did not see a restaurant sign for this one until I stared at the menu taped to the wall and noticed it said Cotenna.
We were around the Meatpacking District area walking around, and I had stumbled onto this restaurant Pastis in my search for food. I remember reading that this restaurant was a happening place and was one of Keith McNally’s restaurants. Keith McNally is a restaurateur that has opened many NYC restaurants including Augustine, Balthazar, Minetta Tavern, and Cherche Midi. We were able to easily book a reservation for a Tuesday evening at 5 PM without any problems whatsoever. When we walked in, we were welcomed with a very fun atmosphere that resembled somewhat of a French market/cafe.
We are likely going to frequent the West Village weekly because we’ve nearly tapped out the heart of the Midtown area. This area is densely populated with a high number of restaurants that goes through frequent turnovers and change. Oppa Bistro was an audible call when we learned that Olio e Piu was very packed at around 5:30 PM on a Friday. We were able to walk into Oppa Bistro with no reservations at around 5:45 PM, and there was just a handful of diners.
We had tickets to the Banksy exhibit later in the evening near the border of Chelsea and West Village. This mussel restaurant was something I had liked to go since I moved out to NYC, and finally all stars aligned. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of mussel restaurants in NYC. In Los Angeles in Culver City, I used to go to a place called “Meet in Paris”, and it had literally 10+ different types of mussel broths. This reminded me of those vibes, so I wanted to try this out.
This restaurant had been on my peripheral for a while because of the lasagna dish. I didn’t decide to try to book a reservation until I learned it was awarded its first ever Michelin Star. I had tried a few times on Resy, but always missed it. Fortunately, I was able to land a reservation on a weekend at 5 PM EST. The restaurant itself is in West Village and felt like a typical trendy cafe in the area. The tables were social distanced, and had a nice romantic setting.
Normally we don’t care about brunches, but this restaurant was surprisingly good and not too expensive. Located in West Village near the “Friends” place and some touristy spots, this is a very quaint and small shop. If I recall, it only has like at most 5 tables with counters spread throughout the place. This place is small, so set your expectations accordingly.
We ordered a glass of orange juice and a One Night Stand. There wasn’t anything particular about the orange juice other than they put ice cubes in it which I thought was weird. However, the One Night Stand was actually pretty refreshing. It’s tequila, watermelon, chili agave, and lime. It has that little spicy kick to it, but not too much. The watermelon rounds it out very nicely.
This little pizza shop is down right at the edge of South/West Village close to a Shake Shack. The panzerottis are like super thin calzones that are frieds as oppose to baked.
The dough that they use here is really tasty. It’s chewy, has a nice bounce, and has a very nice flavor profile to it. The dough definitely has a distinct flavor to it that makes it taste super fresh. They make and fry the panzerotti for each order, so you can be sure it’s super hot when it comes out.
Walked in on a Saturday at 7 PM with no reservations, and it was packed despite it being pretty frigid outside.
Luckily, we got seats at the bar.
The french onion soup was really good. The gruyere cheese was nice and toasty, and the beef broth with the onions wasn’t salty like typical french onion soups.
The porterhouse of course was cooked a perfect medium rare. The strip side was preferred over the filet mignon. There was some sauce on the side, but we didn’t need to use the sauce on the side because the steak was seasoned well and had a good flavor.
Skirt steak was pretty good. Very affordable. Good date spot I think.