Vinyl Steakhouse has been a steak place that I’ve been wanting to go for quite some time. The Flatiron area has been experiencing many new restaurant openings post pandemic, and this was one of them that was appealing. Similar to Turntable Chicken Jazz, this restaurant has a load of vinyls on display, and it plays music as requested. We were able to walk in on a Friday around 6:30 PM without reservations for 2. They seated us at the front of the restaurant.
Frevo was a restaurant that has been on my partner’s list for some time. When we went to Atomix Bar, the chef had also highly recommended the restaurant. The head chef Franco Sampogna is Brazilian and comes from the region that my partner is from. The entrance to the restaurant has a very tiny art gallery, and it’s been recognized on the Michelin Guide with 1 star. We were able to reserve this a few weeks back without any issues.
Bad Roman is located in the Columbus Circle mall on the third floor. The team that created this restaurant also helped create Don Angie, Quality Eats, Quality Italian, other “Quality Branded” restaurants, Zou Zou’s, and more. There was a lot of social media firepower with this restaurant because of how retro it looked in vibe and style. We were able to book a seating pretty easily for 2 at 5:30 PM.
The restaurant is very bustling, with lots of noise and all types of clientele. You will find many on their date nights, and you will find big parties celebrating something as if they were celebrities. The noise level is pretty loud, and you are seated pretty close to other tables. The music is also on the louder side too, but it wasn’t uncomfortably loud. At times it was hard to hear our server.
The Grill was always something on my bucket list not only for a prime rib trolley, but also for Baked Alaska, my favorite dessert. Every place makes this different, so it’s fun to see different interpretations. In addition, this restaurant has always been difficult to get reservations timely, so we were able to book this a few weeks out for 5:30 PM on a Friday evening. The restaurant is located in the Seagram building, and the entrance is located off of 52nd St. You can’t miss it because there’s a carpet laid out.
The nice part about Manhattan is you can always find something and somewhere to eat, no matter where you are in the city. On this brisk, cold night, my partner was running errands in Soho, so I was tasked with looking up something. Of course, it takes me about 30 minutes to find something, and Osteria Morini is what we ended up on. Even though they had restaurant week menus, we decided to just order off the regular menu.
It’s been difficult to find decent Vietnamese restaurants in general in NYC. A lot of them just don’t get the broth in pho right. This one seemed like a more upscale version of general Vietnamese cuisine, and I saw it open less than a year ago on Yelp. It was tough at first to walk in a few times, so fortunately the hype subsided, and I was able to get an easy reservation on Friday at 5:30 PM for 2 people.
For our final dinner of our trip on this very frigid New Year’s Eve in Montreal, I made a reservation at Monarque. Monarque is ranked 16 on Canada’s Best in 2023. They have 2 sides of the restaurant: one is a brasserie and the other is a more formal dining room. We sat in the dining room, which offered a 4 course menu for the night. Our area was a corner spot, where we had plenty of room to also place our jackets and bags without having it coat checked.
We found this coffee shop near our hotel, and it received high ratings from all sorts of traveler sites. We decided to wake up early and give this a try to see how it could be different than Au Pain Dore that we visited a few days ago. We walked in at 8:30 AM, and there was no line but it was full of individuals sitting down sipping coffee.
Due to a last minute cancellation from Ile Flottante because they decided to shut down to give holiday break for their staff, I had to scramble to look for a reservation to book for our trip to Montreal. I had created a verbose document describing fallback plans on which day should there be problems. Montreal Plaza was one of the few for this day. It was ranked 21 on Canada’s 100 Best. We saw that Phil Rosenthal from “Somebody Feed Phil” had eaten here and highly recommended it. Granted, this was probably during a time of different situations. He had gone through a 27-course meal, whereas we just had roughly 5 courses. This restaurant is pretty close to the orange line, so it’s pretty easy to access. Within a few days, we were able to make a reservation for 8:30 PM on December 30.
Despite our hotel offering complimentary breakfast, there is no shortage of delicious coffee shops around the area. Over the next few days, we had some ideas of coffee shops to try out. This particular bakery is located within some fashion store, but it’s opened pretty early. We were able to walk in around 8:30 AM on a Saturday without any foot traffic. This small bakery boutique chain was first born in 1956, and it has continued to expand locations over time.