Napa Rose is located in Disney’s Grand California Adventure hotel and is known for its award-winning wine list and exemplary service. The food has a lot of inspirations from California’s fresh, farm-to-table qualities. This is arguably Disneyland’s premier restaurant that many, including some of my local family and friends, visit just for the food. I wanted to try this out to see how it compared to New York City.
I wrote back in 2019 that this is one of my favorite Brazilian spots because the food and drinks were pretty good. I revisited this with some coworkers to introduce them to Brazilian food again. Keep in mind that this visit is post COVID, so the menu has changed a bit. Gone are the batidas, but fortunately they had other standard Brazilian dishes to order. It is located in “Little Brazil” in Midtown which is literally very few restaurants situated on half the block.
Without getting too much into the history of the origins of this restaurant, the food here generally was just OK for me.
The crispy shrimp is what everyone wants to get. The shell is super crispy, crunchy, and delightfully edible. It’s comparable to the Cantonese style salted pepper shrimp with shell. However, this also has a tangy sauce on the outside of it. For me, it was a little TOO tangy, but some people at my table love it. I think I prefer more savory flavors than sweet.
This restaurant is out in the Pasadena area and is suppose to be pretty decent. After going here, I am convinced that many people just have bad taste in food.
The clams were decent. Not great, but not bad. I can’t really describe this because it tastes exactly how it looks. If you think good, then it’s good. And if you think bad, then yeah it probably tasted bad.
This is a relatively new spot that has opened up in the last couple months.
The pork buns were surprisingly decent. I think they were a little expensive for each as is most Manhattan foods, but it was good.
What was interesting to me was lobster ramen. It had miso flavored soup broth and of course lobster meat with shells. They gave a shell cracker on the side, and they definitely did not skimp on the meat. They gave chashu and lobster here. Even though I am pretty good at extracting lobster meat, I never realized how annoyed I’d be at doing it out of a soup. I think I prefer more of the Boiling Crab style if it came to that. The lobster meat definitely was a good value for the cost of this ramen soup (I think like ~18$?). However, next time, I’d probably not let my eyes dictate over my common sense. I think it was a good idea, but for me I felt the work to extract the meat was not worth it.
If you are ever looking quality Peruvian anywhere, this is the place to be.
The ceviche was by far one of the best I’ve ever had. The fish was very fresh, and it was plentiful.
The lomo saltado here has always been my favorite so far. I’ve always used this place as a benchmark for other Peruvian places that serve lomo saltado. The meat is really tender, and for the price/serving ratio, it’s one of the best out there.
This is Paulie Gee’s sliced pizza. You can order a whole pie if you want. All in all though, I think Vinnie’s in Brooklyn is better.
The pepperoni pizza was good but not great for slice. If you come here expecting a similar crust to what the original Paulie Gee’s serves, prepare to be disappointed. The crust is not that great compared to a lot of NYC sliced pizza places.
This place is in Chinatown off of Hester St. We were looking for Cantonese style cuisine, and honestly there was nothing spectacular or bad.
The pea shoots with garlic had a taste of wine flavor to it, and was good.
The pepper salted pork chops was good as well. It would have been nice if they added more peppers and scallions.
The pepper salted shrimp was just ok for me. I felt it could’ve been fried a little more.
The caipirinhas were decent.
As usual I dislike the coconut flavored ones but appreciate the passion fruit ones.
The feijoada was the actual star here. It’s much better than some of the other Brazilian places I’ve been to. The meat was plentiful, and the flavor is very good.
The bife acebolado was ordered medium rare, and it was cooked medium to medium well. I don’t understand why Brazilian restaurants have problems cooking the meat less than butchering it again. I didn’t find anything great about this.
Came here around 5:30 PM on a Saturday, and the wait was quoted 60 minutes. In reality, it was just 45 minutes, so it wasn’t too bad.
The pizza itself is similar to Roberta’s. The pizza dough is pretty fluffy, and it tastes pretty good.
The Benny Gee had much better taste than Ricotta Be Kiddin Me. The ricotta pizza was more salty, but the Benny Gee definitely had a better well rounded profile.