Au Cheval is well known restaurant based out of Chicago. They specialize in elevated burgers and American dishes. When they opened a New York City location, there were crazy lines out the door. The bigger brother to this restaurant is “4 Charles” which specializes in prime rib. Both the burger and prime rib sandwich at Au Cheval are also found at “4 Charles”. I don’t have the patience to book a “4 Charles” reservation and pay the crazy insane prices for steak, so I thought I’d try some of their offerings here. Because they charge $2.49 plus tax, per person, for a reservation on Resy. It’s pretentious, but that did allow us to secure a reservation easily.

In the city, there are not too many Afghan restaurants to choose from. I’ve only had Afghani food once in my life in NorCal, and it didn’t ever make me yearn for it. However, I thought the menu looked enticing since we were looking for hummus and kabobs around Long Island City. This restaurant is located on the busy Vernon Blvd, which is becoming a happening street for this area. This location of Sami’s Kabob is their second location, whereas their first location is in Astoria.

Hanon is located in the North Williamsburg area and is literally across the street on Union St. from the Metropolitan G stop and diner. It has been awarded the Michelin 2021 Bib Gourmand award. It originated in Kamakura, Japan in the summer of 2018. I hadn’t heard about this restaurant much at all and stumbled onto this through Yelp’s Hot & New filters. I wanted to try this restaurant out because the pictures of the udon sets look quite interesting, and the price point was pretty reasonable.

Following our Disney World trip and since I started going back to the office, we are starting to do our Friday date nights again. This restaurant appeared in the local news as a brand new restaurant, so we thought we’d give it a try before the crowds started discovering this and also because we missed NYC food after being in Disney World for a week. The restaurant is a partnership between restauranteur John McDonald of Mercer Street Hospitality with partnership with Chef Justin Bazdarich (Oxomoco). We recalled we had a great time at Oxomoco for their brunch.

Space 220 was such a difficult reservation to get. I was able to get reservations for it on the very last day that we were flying out for lunch. When we arrived, there already was a line for walk-ins. Fortunately, we had the 11:30 AM reservation with out flight being at 5:00 PM, so we were looking forward to this new experience. When you arrive at the bottom, you have to stand in line (under the sun) until they check you in. Once they check you in, you enter a room where they ask you to wait for the “elevator”.

We were at Universal Orlando today, and we made a reservation via OpenTable super late for Todd English’s Bluezoo in the Disney World Dolphin hotel. We learned that we could valet our car and get it validated for free with the restaurant. If you opted to park yourself, you not only have to drive away from the restaurant and park at another lot, but you would have to pay (I vaguely remember) $15. It’s much better to just valet your car. My cousin selected this restaurant because they enjoyed Todd English restaurants generally, whereas I have never been to one.

We rode the Harry Potter train from Diagon Alley into the other park which was a really cool experience. This side of the park also has the Harry Potter castle (I forget the name), and the decor definitely was more spaced out and open. We went to the Three Broomsticks restaurant to just grab a quick bite (or in my case a quick drink) to help us last to 9 PM for our dinner reservation.

I’ll be honest that I was pretty excited going into the newish Harry Potter section (Diagon Alley) of Universal Orlando. I had heard this area was large and well done. When I walked in, the decor of this area was simply incredible. The walkways, the paths, and the shop exterior decor were all very well done and on theme. We decided to wait in line for 15 minutes for this ice cream shop.

This was my first time ever to Universal Orlando, so I was pretty excited to see how this differed compared to Universal Hollywood. One of my favorite rides over there was the Backlot Tour, and behold, we realized there is no such thing as a backlot in Universal Orlando. This was purely a theme park. After we rode The Minion ride, my cousin wanted to show me the Simpsons area.

The finale for our Epcot night was this very last minute reservation for 5 at La Hacienda De San Angel. At this time, I’ve just barely recovered from being full, so I am ready to give this a try. Unlike the Mexican restaurant next to the Caballeros ride, this one was more like your typical restaurant without the smell of chlorine water or being overly dark. Per a recommendation and not normally eating Mexican food in NYC, this was something on my list to try.