The Reading Room is a restaurant that caught my eye on Yelp’s “New and Hot” list. The menu is fairly small, simple, but seemed like it could be a good one. I’ve been looking for restaurants around my work area that I could potentially refer others for drinks or a not too expensive dinner. This restaurant is located in the back of The Gotham Hotel on 46th between Madison and Fifth Avenue.

I don’t know much about Piccola Cucina other than that it’s real close to Bloomingdales in Midtown. When we tried to stop in at 5:30 PM as a walk-in many months ago, they told us there was a 2 hour wait. Since we knew today we were going to be around the area, I saw they had a few openings and quickly booked a reservation for 6 PM for 2. This review is for the Midtown Uptown location.

Naro is a new Korean restaurant that opened right next to the Rockafeller ice skating rink. According to the menu, the Naro name was inspired by South Korea’s first ever space vehicle to successfully achieve Earth’s orbit and also from the Korean phrase nah-ro (which means “through me”). Naro focuses on Korean cuisine, drawing inspiration from classic dishes from different moments in Korean history. Lastly, this is the third restaurant from the Atomix and Attaboy founders, so there is definitely some expectations.

Gatsby Landing has been on my list for quite some time. The menu is reasonably priced, and it’s fairly close to my office and close to the 42nd trains. I figured today would be the day to check it out, since my options are running a little thin since I was looking for a walk-in restaurant. We arrived here around 5:30 PM on a Friday evening, and we were able to walk in easily for a party of 2.

We were in the Midtown area shopping yet again. The previous night we went to Serafina, which was pretty awful. Luckily we had more choices, and this restaurant was nearby. It caught my eye because it had a nice indoor patio area that was lit by natural light similarly to The Milling Room. The menu seemed reasonable as well as the price, so maybe there can be some value found here.

We were near the Columbus Circle area just shopping and walking around. Generally, this area doesn’t have too many great places to eat, and we couldn’t decide what we were in the mood for. I had proposed the thought of Serafina since I’ve never been there and my partner had a fantastic experience back in their home country. We were able to walk in without reservations during the core hours of dinner.

What is tsukemen (つけ麺; pronounced “skee-men”)? It’s basically thick udon served cold with a side of a thick soup/broth for dipping. In Los Angeles, I frequented a place in Sawtelle near the Westside called “Tsujita” that also specialized in something similar. Okiboru recently opened in Manhattan, and it’s famed for being on Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list in Atlanta. They do not take reservations, so when we arrived at this location at 5:15 PM on a Friday, the line outside was about 10 parties ranging from 2 to 6 people per group.

Gage and Tollner has been on my list for quite a while now. I was casually browsing for restaurants with baked alaska, and this had shown up high on people’s list. Whenever I had tried to look at reservations, it was pretty booked. I was very lucky to have found an open reservation for 2 at 5 PM on a Sunday the night before. So how did it go?

This is either a blessing or a curse of the reservation system Tock. When the time comes to make reservations for super hot restaurants, you literally have less than 2 seconds to grab a reservation spot when they become available. I mistakenly grabbed a bar reservation thinking it was the Chef’s Counter, and I was mildly disappointed. However, I refreshed the reservation system about 10 minutes later, and I noticed there were an opening for counter seating the following week.

We had to run errands around Macy’s, so this was a good chance to check out some restaurant that was fairly light and also didn’t have strong smells. We were able to walk in on a Saturday at 5:30 PM with no reservations. We noticed the menus had both skewers and hot pot as options. I saw that many people ordered hot pot with cotton candy on top, and we contemplated briefly but decided not to.