In my first visit to Blanca back in September 2018, I was a solo diner and had just moved to New York City pretty recently. I wrote down, “Really good. Definitely get the drink pairing. Michelin 2 star. $300 per person including drinks.” The vibe and space was absolutely fantastic. I then met my partner, and the pandemic arrived. Blanca shutdown and just simply never reopened until a few weeks ago.

For my partner’s birthday, I decided on this 2 Michelin Star restaurant located in the Williamsburg area. What appealed to me originally about this was that it was not just another French restaurant. French cuisine is great, but there are so many high end French restaurants around the city. Perhaps I am getting a little burnt out of having the same French tastes over and over, so I wanted something that was less normal.

Atera is a two Michelin Star restaurant in New York City. We’ve been wanting to go to this restaurant pre-pandemic, and each time we make a reservation, it was always cancelled due to shifts in NYC rules around the pandemic. Fortunately, the city is coming alive, and the reservation stuck this time around. We celebrated our very special anniversary at 5 PM. The cool thing about this restaurant that attracted me was that it had a temperament pairing of non-alcoholic juices.

Le Bernardin is a three Michelin Star restaurant in New York City that primarily deals with seafood. The head chef is Eric Ripert, who is very well known in the higher end spectrum of the culinary world. We actually saw him on the floor with a mask on talking to some of the wait staff. This particular occasion was for a birthday celebration. Our reservation was at 5 PM, and it had to be reserved a month in advance.

Indoor dining finally opened again in NYC on September 30, 2020. There are those that feel it’s reckless in this COVID temperament, but we still decided to celebrate by booking an indoor reservation at Cote, a 1 Michelin Star Korean BBQ restaurant. Normally, this is difficult to get a reasonable time, so we were happy it was not too bad. Like all upscale restaurants, they take your temperature via the forehead, and each table is partitioned by a plastic partition.

For this special outing, Yakitori Torishin has been on my list ever since I moved to New York City. I finally had a chance to try this for the girlfriend’s birthday. We wanted the regular yakitori experience as opposed to the select counter experience. The reason is that I just couldn’t imagine the value from yakitori at literally double the cost of a regular omakase. They brought us into the back room, and we were still seated in front of the chefs.

This post is going to be a big one. For our first anniversary, we treated ourselves to a nice French place that I think is generally underrated and under the radar. Gabriel Kreuthers has been something that I’ve always wanted to try, and it’s rated 2 Michelin Stars in 2019. We went bold with the Chef’s Carte Blanche Tasting Menu. There are a total of at least 28 dishes spread through of what they say is 9 courses.

This apparently is one of Jean Georges Vongerichten’s upscale farm-fresh eatery, and it has a Latin American fusion influence. We came here without reservations on a weekday night and were seated at the communal table. The spring pea guacamole with warm crunchy tortillas was actually pretty good. The chips themselves were nicely salted, and the big tortilla that came with the guacamole was more crunchy than the latter. The split pea guacamole had a nice fresh texture.

This place was really really good. Korean Michelin 2 star and well worth it. Probably one of the best Michelin star restaurants I’ve been to in NYC.

Place is pretty good but veggie centric. Pretty much farm to table kind of foods.