Normally we have Friday plans in the evening for a dinner restaurant after work. We didn’t plan for anything, so this restaurant was a decision at the whim. My partner always prefers either Latin based restaurants or Mediterranean because there they love hummus. This restaurant was on 51st right next to Rockafeller, so it was easy to access even on a rainy day. When we arrived at 6 PM on a Friday night, we were able to walk in without reservations as the restaurant was pretty empty.

Carne Mare is an Italian chophouse restaurant from Andrew Carmellini. He has opened a number of restaurants in NYC already as well as other places in the U.S. The thing that attracted mem to this restaurant was I was craving for prime rib, and then I noticed they had this gorgonzola cured strip-loin that people have been raving about. To add to this, they also offer baked alaska which is basically one of my favorite desserts of all time.

We had the pleasure of enjoying the company of one of our friends who is coming into town for work. This restaurant is conveniently close to the Highline and was also near their hotel. I vaguely recall that this is a very popular seafood restaurant down in West Village, and it had been on my list for a number of years. Surprisingly, they opened another location here, and we thought we’d go check it out.

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 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.

My partner saw on their social media that some of their people had raved about this place for lunch. I took a look at the dinner menu here, and it seemed unjustly expensive for what it was. Usually a good indicator of prices starts with oysters. If a restaurant charges $4 for east coast oysters (average price should be around $3), you would expect the restaurant to have higher than usual menu prices.

For New Year’s Eve, we were fortunate to book this restaurant in Midtown East at the very last minute. This was always on our list since outdoor dining was a thing as the pictures of its settings looked quite appealing. Most tables have their own electric heater that sat directly above the table, so it wasn’t too cold compared to other places. For what it’s worth, it was in the high 30s with some wind chills.

You know what’s one of the great things about Astoria? It’s the excellent Greek seafood restaurants that are within walking distances of each other. We had been to Taverna Kyclades before, but it’s been a while since we’ve dined at their competitors. This was a restaurant that was within walking distance from our Food Bazaar trek on the way back home, so we thought to stop by and give this a try.

Close to NYU, this is next door to its parent restaurant Domodomo. This is primarily a rawbar, meaning somewhat affordable raw seafood. The iced green tea is nice for a warm day. The green tea is quite flavorful, but of course if you want it to be sweeter, you can ask for sugar. We ordered a dozen oysters. Essentially 2 of the following: Half Moon (Cape Cod Bay, MA) : sweet, medium salnity, clean finish Wellfleet (Wellfleet Harbor, MA) : briny, creamy, high salinity Savage Harbour (PEI, Canada) : crisp, sweet, medium salinity Chekbooktook (New Brunswick) : buttery, sweet, delicate Duxbury (Duxbury Bay, MA) : briny, sweet, and buttery finish the daily oysters : can’t remember what the waiter said about these other than being the saltiest of the east coast They serve oysters with your choice of 2 condiments: cocktail sauce, mignonette, wasabi lime sorbet, thai chili, and ponzu.

This place is one of Jean Georges’ new seafood-centric restaurant situated right at the corner of the Pier near South Street Seaport. This area has a tiny Boston like mall where people can shop and eat at some decent restaurants. The iPic theater is also here too. The area is largely going through some sort of construction. The restaurant is located at the edge of the pier and overlooks the water facing towards the Brooklyn Bridge.