Located near the Vessel and Hudson Yards, Zou Zou’s was on my partner’s list for quite some time. They simply love Mediterranean small plates and dips. We actually had to make a reservation a few weeks out to nab our reservation at 5 PM on a Sunday night. The restaurant lies in this little courtyard where it leads into one of the Peloton offices. When we arrived, we were able to check in a few minutes early.

Le Rock is one of those new hot and busy restaurants around the Rockafeller area because it comes from the team of Frenchette. The majority of the menu is in French, and it had been receiving pretty stellar reviews for the most part. We walked in at 5:45 PM, and we were very fortunate that they were able to seat us due to a prior cancellation. We were told that we would have to be done with dinner within 90 minutes.

This Memorial Day weekend, we’ve been enjoying our free time just idling at home and doing chores. For Monday, my partner wanted to run some errands, and we were around the Rockafeller area. Because it was still a bit early around 4 PM, it was difficult to find restaurants that had already turned over to their dinner time. Eventually, my partner pointed out this restaurant, and we decided to give it a try.

We had tickets to watch Phantom of the Opera before it closes in April, and my partner was scouring for some type of restaurant week menu to eat. They landed on this restaurant which is pretty close by as it had last minute vacancy. I already had very low expectations on some of these Italian restaurants that are close to theaters especially ones that are restaurant week driven. The restaurant week menu had some overlap with the normal dishes, but the ingredients to me did not really stand out.

Felice appears to be an Italian premium chain restaurant with locations around New York and Florida. We were around the area shopping and walking around for errands of course, and my partner fortunately has been on an Italian binge recently. They really love lasagna, and this restaurant nearby had it on its menu. We were able to walk in on a Sunday without reservation at around 5:30 PM. When you walk in, it appears to be a coffee shop with a barista.

I work around the Rockafeller area, and I had to walk towards the Midtown West for an errand during lunch. Near the area that I was in, I noticed this Vietnamese pho restaurant that didn’t have many people. Since it was cold outside and before I head back, I decided to check this out for lunch, considering it had some basic pho options. When I walked in, there were some solo diners who were scarfing their noodles fast, so I felt at ease that this was would be a quick lunch spot.

We were around the Times Square area, and this new fast food fish and chips restaurant just opened from Gordon Ramsay. The restaurant also has locations in Las Vegas, Orlando, DC, and now New York City. Gordon Ramsay used to have restaurants opened in NYC, but they have all been closed for quite some time. This is the only restaurant that he now has in NYC. So how was it?

Naro is a new Korean restaurant that opened right next to the Rockafeller ice skating rink. According to the menu, the Naro name was inspired by South Korea’s first ever space vehicle to successfully achieve Earth’s orbit and also from the Korean phrase nah-ro (which means “through me”). Naro focuses on Korean cuisine, drawing inspiration from classic dishes from different moments in Korean history. Lastly, this is the third restaurant from the Atomix and Attaboy founders, so there is definitely some expectations.

We were near the Columbus Circle area just shopping and walking around. Generally, this area doesn’t have too many great places to eat, and we couldn’t decide what we were in the mood for. I had proposed the thought of Serafina since I’ve never been there and my partner had a fantastic experience back in their home country. We were able to walk in without reservations during the core hours of dinner.

We had to run errands around Macy’s, so this was a good chance to check out some restaurant that was fairly light and also didn’t have strong smells. We were able to walk in on a Saturday at 5:30 PM with no reservations. We noticed the menus had both skewers and hot pot as options. I saw that many people ordered hot pot with cotton candy on top, and we contemplated briefly but decided not to.