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.

We actually have eaten here before, but we totally forgot to take pictures and document. From the best recollection, we remembered this place as being one of our favorite Brazilian restaurants in NYC. So we decided to visit this again to document. The maracuja caipirinha we recalled being really good our first time doing. Ordered it again, and it was nothing but a disappointment. The tartness of the passion fruit tasted sour and borderlinen rotten.

A friend was in town around the Hudson Yards area, and we wanted to look for something around the area. The menu here looked pretty decent, and it was on my bookmarks for quite a while. The bread came with some type of tomato olive oil medley. It reminded me of bruschetta toppings but more akin to diced tomatoes out of a jar. The sauce itself was alright. The octopus appetizer was pretty good.

If you’re around the Rockafeller area and are looking for pretty decent Italian food at a not overly expensive price, this restaurant might be a good candidate. It is located on the 2nd floor of the Nordstrom NYC flagship store near the watches section. We walked in without reservations around 5:30 PM, and we were seated at the bar fairly quickly. Because Nordstrom doesn’t have the drinks menu online, I’m hoping my memory serves me well.

We were around Central Park near the southern side, and this was on my list of restaurants to try. This new-ish Chinese (Shanghainese) restaurant is located where Joe’s Shanghai used to be in Midtown. It’s not too far from the Apple flagship store. The stir fry snow pea leaf was mighty tasty. You can taste the subtleness of that wine, and the vegetable itself was tender and delicious. The yang chow fried rice was very uplifting and fresh too.

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.