Valentine’s Day … it’s yet another day of the year to spend more money on your partner! Valerie is a restaurant located in Midtown about 3 streets up from Bryant Park. My partner was craving crab cakes and aside from ordering from Jimmy’s Famous Seafood, I was having a lot of trouble finding something. They gave me a list, and I noticed that there was crab cake on this menu. I had no idea what to expect on an early Saturday evening when we arrived.

We’ve been to Boucherie before on 6th Ave near the West Village. We expected the food here to be similar but not the same as that location. I was craving for prime rib, and disappointingly, all the other places in the city were pretty expensive at $70 and up. But this restaurant had roast beef for a reasonable price, so I was expecting it to be similar enough to satisfy that hunger.

One of our traditions that will be coming back soon is eating out on Fridays after work. We’ve been exploring the heart of midtown area and trying to walk into restaurants without reservations. We tried to go to one of the Cuban restaurants, but unfortunately they required a 40 minute wait. This restaurant wasn’t too far away, but they did have prime rib on the menu. When we arrived, it seems there was some show going on, but we were able to sit at a small table in the bar area.

After an early afternoon along the mid section of Central Park at the Natural History museum, I was looking for specifically Mediterranean restaurants within a half mile walk. As usual, we did not have reservations in mind, so we were hoping we could walk in. Sorting by the “hot and new” on Yelp, we decided on Miriam which seemed to be a second Israeli location for the owners. Fortunately, the restaurant was quite open around 4:45 PM, and we were able to walk in.

We saw this restaurant’s opening relatively recently on an NYC openings blog. I wasn’t sure what exactly was the “Genesis House” or what “curated by Onjium” meant, but I figure post pandemic this was an excellent opportunity to make a reservation for something new to please my gourmand syndrome. The Genesis house is kind of interesting. The first floor is a showroom of Genesis vehicles where you can sit in the cars and talk to the different reps.

We were around the Bloomingdales area running some errands back and forth around the Midtown East area and decided to take the risk of looking for a restaurant without making reservations since we normally eat dinner fairly early. This Quality Italian seems to be from the same owners of Quality Meats and Quality Bistro which are on my list. Quality Italian is a modern take on the Italian American steakhouse tradition, and the prices are probably on the mid to high range.

We had to go to the Upper East to return some items, and of course that allowed us to also explore some restaurants around that area. I recall Mission Ceviche having a stall in the Gainsvoort/Chelsea food hall, but I never actually tried it. They actually have a few locations in the city, and fortunately we were near their Upper East Side location. My partner is a ceviche fanatic, so we thought we’d take a look.

This restaurant is very close to the Bloomingdales along Lexington in the Upper East side. Surprisingly it has been here for a while, but we seldom come to this neighborhood to grab food. It just so happens we were on an errand run, so my partner was able to grab an early reservation. This is one of the more price friendly restaurants of Jean Georges although it arguably is still on the pricy side.

We got some new Mexican restaurant coupons for a margarita/beer. This location is quite convenient near Times Square, just a few steps from the heart of it. We made a reservation for a 4:15 PM on a Saturday late afternoon, and the crowd traffic was fairly light outside and inside. The reservation was probably not needed, but you never know. When we arrived at the restaurant, they did ask for proof of vaccination.

We had tickets to the Banksy exhibit later in the evening near the border of Chelsea and West Village. This mussel restaurant was something I had liked to go since I moved out to NYC, and finally all stars aligned. Surprisingly, there are not a lot of mussel restaurants in NYC. In Los Angeles in Culver City, I used to go to a place called “Meet in Paris”, and it had literally 10+ different types of mussel broths.