Victor’s Cafe is fairly close to Times Square, but not quite in the Theater District. It’s located on 52nd St near 7th ave, and it has had a steady stream of patrons over the last couple years. What is interesting about this restaurant is that the menu is fairly straight forward, and most of the visitors are people referred by past patrons, including myself. I’m not a fan of Cuban food in general, but this restaurant’s food was surprisingly pleasant.

If you’re just shy of Central Park to the south and it’s in the middle of the day, this might be a good option. On the bottom is the mixed grilled meat platter for two people (psita tis oras poikilia). It’s a combination of lambchops, traditional Greek sauce, pork/beef skewers, and pita and tzatziki. All of this was pretty good. The lambchops were ordered medium rare, and it was tender and delicious.

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.

We were visiting the Morgan Library on a late Sunday afternoon, and this restaurant was close by and on my list. I’ve always been into old school Korean places where the food was centered around non BBQ items such as bossam and kimchi jigae. The egg soup was served as part of the meal. It’s simply tasted of steamed egg with some scallions on top. Pretty straight forward and pretty good.

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.

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.

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.

Katsu is some of my favorite Japanese food. It’s basically crispy, fried pork cutlets served with a savory sauce. We decided to try this restaurant because it was close to where we were in Midtown. This type of food generally is not overly expensive like other Japanese foods, and it’s pretty filling too. And for whatever reason, the pork cutlets are always really good and hearty too. I’ve also been able to come back to this restaurant several times solo and was able to be seated without much issues.

This place has a pretty decent ambiance. The yuzu margarita was surprisingly pretty good. If you haven’t had yuzu before and like citrus, I recommend you get this if it’s available. I just checked their website’s drink menu, and it’s not on there. This drink wasn’t strong at all, and had a really really good before and after taste. I would drink this over any regular margarita any day.