Vapiano seems like it’s a chained Italian fast eatery. For the NYC location, the front desk gives you a card, and you walk up to a pasta station if you want pasta or a pizza station if you want pizza. You then tell the cook what you want, and they make it fresh in front of you. They ask that you take the card and tap the screen with it to get it charged with what you ordered. After you finish your meal, you pay as the cashier as you exit.
This place is near Stone Street down in the Financial District. I’m always down for a good cheesesteak, and yeah I also butcher the Philly style by ordering provolone over cheeze whiz.
The steak special comes with homemade broccoli rabe, provolone cheese, and I also added hot cherry peppers. These are the cherry peppers that are pickled with a nice kick to it. I thought this sandwich was pretty good, though I still prefer Federoff’s in Williamsburg. The sandwich was pretty big at a decent price, but I still feel Federoff is more complete.
We were looking for a decent steak place that was walkable from where we were. The best steak house in my opinion in the city is Keen’s Steakhouse, so expectations were set pretty low. This venue is fairly nice. It’s close to Smith and Wollensky and located inside some hotel. This was one of the few steakhouses at this time that had hardly any people, so one can only think that this place wouldn’t be that good.
This is a little quaint Brazilian breakfast-ish shop near 72nd Street close to Strawberry Fields. Their specialty is tapioca, açai, and pão (i.e. TAP). Many of their main products are gluten free, for those that really care about that. The Brazilian tapioca can be interpreted to be a crepe, but other than the shape, the texture isn’t really like a crepe at all.
The pão de queijo is basically cheese balls. These are much bigger than what you would get at a typical Brazilian restaurant. They taste similar to it and were quite tasty.
This is easily walkable from the 5th Ave flagship Apple store for some decent casual Korean food.
The banchan comes with the bulgogi bento box below. It’s basically that white pickled daikon, kimchi radish, and kimchi. Just a note that their kimchi here is super sour compared to other places I’ve been to.
The bulgogi bento box was ok. It came with japchae (Korean sweet potato noodles), bulgogi, fish cake, kimchi daikon, and what tasted similar to tempura potato of some sort. The bulgogi was a little on the greasy side and very sweet. The japchae was pretty decent. The fish cake was pretty good, and so was the daikon. I didn’t care much for the tempura. I think the bulgogi bento box was just OK, and I’d recommend to get something else instead unless you’re hungry and don’t care.
This ramen place is near NYU and Union Station, so it’s very accessible.
The spicy miso ramen comes with ox bones and marrow broth, spicy miso garlic base, bean sprouts, roasted corn, toasted nori, naruto fishcake, soy braised beef, scallions, and thick wavy noodle. THe broth is super rich, far beyond what I was expecting. It’s not spicy per se, but the soup doesn’t go down super smooth for me. At the end, the spicy pepper would always surprise for some reason. Maybe it’s attributed to the oil and thickness of the broth, I’m not sure. Regardless, I thought the ramen was acceptable, but there are better ones in the city.
The Blue Ribbon chain is known for their seafood and sushi. So it was interesting to see them coming out with the fried chicken venture. This has been around for a while, and for the last few years, friends have raved about it.
We got the 4 piece mixed with fries basket. The chicken itself is pretty tender and juicy. The skin is lightly crisped and doesn’t have the batter thickness that something like KFC or Popeyes has. What I did not particularly like was how much seasoning was on the skin. It was salty. The fries themselves were OK. They remind me of Checkers/Rallys batter consistency. This location has all you can drink/fill Boylan soda dispensary. They also have sauces to go along with your fries and chicken.
This place is known for the dessert chef featured on Cake Boss. To be quite honest, I’ve never watched it, so I don’t know what to expect.
We got chocolate cannoli, plain cannoli, some red velvet cake thing, and lobster tail. To be honest, the lobster tail was actually quite good and was my favorite of everything. The lobster tail’s pastry thin crust was flaky but not brittle. It tasted like a delicate thin but sturdy crust of a pastel I had at Aldea. The filling was good and not too sweet. The cannolis, to be honest, I could do without. They were actually quite sweet, so I don’t really recommend that as much as the lobster tail if you had to pick one. Lastly, the red velvet cake looking thing was not very good. There wasn’t much cake in it. And if there was, it was blended with all the cream inside.
This place is located near 42nd Street and 9 ave in the POD hotel. The restaurant decor is kind of interesting as it does give out a tropical-ish vibe to it. There is an outdoor area that has a lot of those basket woven seats with a cushion on them. From where we sat outdoors, we can see views of the H&M building and the Empire State Building in plain sight.
We stopped by for lunch for David Chang’s newest Momofuku restaurant and is located in the mall across the street from The Vessel. It’s on the 5th floor near the Bouchon Bakery. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too filled, but then again it’s terribly hot and humid outside.
The trading card cocktail consists of plantation pineapple, cruzan blackstrap, smith & cross rums, trader vic’s macadamia liqueur, curry, and yogurt. I did not like this at all as it was very sweet.