SaiTong Thai was a relatively new Thai restaurant that opened near the Theater District. One of its allures is that it appears to be an upscale Thai restaurant. The menu when I glanced at it seemed pretty decent although the prices were on the higher side. Since we had a theater date, we decided to check this restaurant out. We easily made a reservation for a Saturday at 5:30 PM.

SEA is a casual South East Asian restaurant from Chef Jungsik Yim of two Michelin Star restaurant, Jungsik. The restaurant offers a raw bar, small plates, and shareable plates with creativity. We were able to make a reservation pretty last minute for 5:15 PM on a Friday evening fairly easy. We arrived a little early, and they were able to seat us without issue. We had some high expectations that this restaurant will have great flavors.

This new Southeast Asian restaurant is located on the third floor of the Columbus Circle mall. The restaurant is part of the “Quality Branded” restaurant group, which also included Quality Italian, Don Angie, and Zou Zou’s to name a few. What was exciting about the menu here was that it was leaning into higher end Vietnamese and Thai flavors. We were able to make a reservation a few days in advance for two people at 5:15 PM on a Friday evening.

Michael Mina is an award winning chef and restaurateur that currently runs and operates over 40 restaurants worldwide. He opened this restaurant in the JW Marriott Essex House, right across from Central Park south and near Columbus Circle. This is his love letter to the classic American steakhouse. Bourbon Steak has multiple locations in the United States, so it’s not an entirely new restaurant. I picked this restaurant particularly because of their prix fixe menu that seems to give a pretty good spread of what this restaurant has to offer.

We won yet another lottery for one of the theater shows, so we were hoping to walk into Wondee Thai. As expected, there was a line outside and a wait inside, so we didn’t want to gamble missing the show if we had waited. We instead opted to walk a block south to this restaurant which had no patrons. We were able to walk in for 2 at 5:30 PM on a Saturday night without reservations.

We won the theater lottery to watch another play in the Theater district. This was on my list for some reason, and it was conveniently very close to the theater. The menu seemed quintessential Italian American type food, and as a bonus, they also have a 3-course theater menu prix fixe for $55 per person. I was able to make a reservation pretty easily for 2 for 5:30 PM on a Wednesday night.

We had previously been to The Bar at The Modern, where the value to taste ratio was quite good. In an effort to knock another off our list, we booked The Kitchen experience. On the other side of the bar, there was a dining room with a lot of natural light of the garden of the Museum of Modern Arts. This area served a more extensive tasting menu with wine pairing options.

Mari is yet another seaweed hand-roll type restaurant in a very crowded space in New York City. The difference from many others though is that this is Korean-centric, and it has earned 1 Michelin Star in both 2022 and 2023. This restaurant is the same team as Kochi, which is also near the area in the Theater District. Since my partner was attending another event, I was looking at this restaurant because perhaps it’d be very solo friendly, and it was quite easy to make a 1-seat reservation the night prior.

Kajiken is located a few streets south of Bryant Park. I originally was trying to do a walk into Tonchin, but they told me there was a 1-hour wait for a single bar seat solo. Irked, I walked towards Bryant Park, and I found that there’s this ramen place that was on my list to try. Interestingly enough, they have both soup-based ramen and dry ramen. Their dry ramen is like most other dry-noodle things where there is some oils and mixtures at the bottom of the bowl, and you simply can mix everything.

Israeli Chef Efi Naon opened a relatively new Moroccan-Israeli and Middle Eastern inspired restaurant in the Hell’s Kitchen area. I saw this on Yelp a few months ago, and the menu items look reasonably interesting. I was able to book a reservation very easily on a Friday for 5:15 PM without any issues. This restaurant is close to the 50th E train station and relatively near some of the outer edges of the Theater District.