Located near the Vessel and Hudson Yards, Zou Zou’s was on my partner’s list for quite some time. They simply love Mediterranean small plates and dips. We actually had to make a reservation a few weeks out to nab our reservation at 5 PM on a Sunday night. The restaurant lies in this little courtyard where it leads into one of the Peloton offices. When we arrived, we were able to check in a few minutes early.

We just landed in Honolulu for our Hawaii trip, and we were pretty hungry. Honolulu is 6 hours behind New York City! Our other friends had arrived a few hours earlier than us and suggested we check out this slight hole in the wall shop for poke near their hotel. My poke impression has always been pretty indifferent, so I was curious what is it about Hawaii poke that people rave about.

Carthay Circle is located fairly close to the front of California Adventure. You do need an admission to the park in order to access this restaurant which is basically in the square at the end of the main road from the entrance. This was actually our second time visiting. I remember the first time being fairly underwhelming, so I felt it was wasteful to even spend the time to document it.

I’ve always felt Los Angeles has better Mexican food, and I was offered a choice of eating hot pot or going for Mexican food. The hot pot choice would’ve been a place that we have a chain of here in NYC, and since we don’t know when we’ll be back in LA, I thought the answer was pretty easy. We decided on the Mexican joint because this is a local favorite for my cousin.

We’ve finally arrived in Los Angeles to kick it with family before heading up to Mammoth for a wedding. This restaurant was suggested because it has modern Taiwanese American tastes to it that is seemingly becoming a trend in the Alhambra areas. Unlike NYC, I’ve always felt LA had better Asian food in the low/mid price ranges, so let’s see how it tastes. We were able to wait list on Yelp for about 5 minutes around 10:15 AM.

We were around the Hell’s Kitchen area catching up on a Broadway musical called “MJ: The Musical” based on Michael Jackson. This area we have rarely explored much, considering early post-pandemic, this area was quite dangerous with the drug users and harassers. Nevertheless, this katsu restaurant has been on my list for years, and I’ve been meaning to check this out. We were able to walk in on a Sunday at around 5:30 PM without any issue.

We were in the Flatiron area running errands, and unfortunately the nearby S&P sandwich shop was closed for dinner. As we scoured for food, we did ultimately end up at this Tacos Güey place. I vaguely had remembered that this was a relatively new restaurant, so we opted to try it out. We were able to walk in on a Friday evening at 6:30 PM and find a pair of seats in the bar.

Nubeluz is a bar from Chef José Andrés located on the 50th floor of The Ritz-Carlton in Nomad with the intent to show visitors the NYC skyline. He has another recently opened restaurant, Zaytinya, on the first floor of this hotel. We were able to make reservations for 4:00 PM on a Sunday a few weeks in advanced. When you walk into the hotel, check in with the concierge who will swipe you up to the floor.

Le Rock is one of those new hot and busy restaurants around the Rockafeller area because it comes from the team of Frenchette. The majority of the menu is in French, and it had been receiving pretty stellar reviews for the most part. We walked in at 5:45 PM, and we were very fortunate that they were able to seat us due to a prior cancellation. We were told that we would have to be done with dinner within 90 minutes.

This Memorial Day weekend, we’ve been enjoying our free time just idling at home and doing chores. For Monday, my partner wanted to run some errands, and we were around the Rockafeller area. Because it was still a bit early around 4 PM, it was difficult to find restaurants that had already turned over to their dinner time. Eventually, my partner pointed out this restaurant, and we decided to give it a try.