We had another Friday outing to watch the Mary Jane broadway show starring Rachel McAdams. Because this was very last minute, my partner was able to book this restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. As we explore more of this area, it’s turning out that there are a good amount of restaurant options especially for Italian food. We made reservations easily for 5:30 PM on a Friday evening. It was noticeable there was a large amount of theater crowds since tables cleared right before 7 and 8 PM.

This Smith & Mills location is in the small inner plaza where the Rockafeller rink is. It caught my attention because the Tribeca location apparently had received some high regard, so I thought it’d be worth a shot to check out this location. Although the food options are small, some of it looked pretty tasty. This restaurant is fairly close to Naro. We had a reservation for 3 for 5 PM, and the place was not full at all.

Class on 38th was something that seemed interesting at first glance when I was browsing the “Hot and New” sections of Yelp. The menu looked like tapas with a price point that wasn’t too expensive. I went here with a business partner, who was in town and looking for something to try. I made a reservation a few weeks back without any issues for 6 PM on a Thursday. When I walked in, they allowed me to sit early to wait for my guest to arrive.

This restaurant has been on my radar for years, and we finally got a chance to try this. What was appealing to me was the price and options that they had. Not only was it steak frites, but you had the opportunity to try different types of steaks if you really wanted. We had an early afternoon theater showing, and this location was within minutes. We were able to walk in around 5:00 PM on a Sunday without reservations, though they told us that we had to finish our food within 2.

My partner had another theater show to go to, so I was tasked for looking something near the Theater District. We were watching some random TV show, and they showed lasagna. I don’t remember the context, but my partner wanted that. As we’re still exploring the Hell’s Kitchen area, I ended up finding this restaurant that we were able to walk in since the reservation system doesn’t work at all.

Bad Roman is located in the Columbus Circle mall on the third floor. The team that created this restaurant also helped create Don Angie, Quality Eats, Quality Italian, other “Quality Branded” restaurants, Zou Zou’s, and more. There was a lot of social media firepower with this restaurant because of how retro it looked in vibe and style. We were able to book a seating pretty easily for 2 at 5:30 PM.

My partner had won some tickets to watch Appropriate on Broadway starring Sarah Paulson. The show starts at 8, but we had to pick up the will-call tickets by 7:30. I saw this Japanese small eatery was nearby the theater on 46th St, and I thought this would be a decent restaurant to try out since there’s a lot of little things we can order. We were able to walk in on a Saturday evening at around 5:30 PM before it got busy.

It was raining on this gloomy Friday, and we wanted to eat somewhere close to Rockafeller. I recalled we had tried to walk into this restaurant on prior days with no success. I looked them up on OpenTable and saw that they had openings throughout the night. We figured it was worth a shot to try to walk in, and we found success. We were seated next to the door inside a glass section of the restaurant towards the front at around 6:30 PM.

Normally during every Thanksgiving Thursday, I cook for my partner some poultry thing whether it be quail or turkey breast. This year we decided to relieve me the duties of frantically looking for materials and cooking for 6 hours for the 2 of us. Marea was closed for a few months, and we’ve always had this on our list. Because it just reopened in October, I decided to pursue the Thanksgiving tasting menu.

We’ve been just demolishing a ton of restaurants around the Theater District since we’ve been going to a lot of Broadway shows. This restaurant was on our eyes to go to, but they always take a small break between 4 to 5 PM, so it can put a little time crunch if you have a show around 6:30 to 7 PM. However despite the restaurant being small with probably 5 or 6 tables, we were able to walk in on a Sunday evening around 5:30 PM without reservations.