Valentine’s Day … it’s yet another day of the year to spend more money on your partner! Valerie is a restaurant located in Midtown about 3 streets up from Bryant Park. My partner was craving crab cakes and aside from ordering from Jimmy’s Famous Seafood, I was having a lot of trouble finding something. They gave me a list, and I noticed that there was crab cake on this menu. I had no idea what to expect on an early Saturday evening when we arrived.

Normally we have Friday plans in the evening for a dinner restaurant after work. We didn’t plan for anything, so this restaurant was a decision at the whim. My partner always prefers either Latin based restaurants or Mediterranean because there they love hummus. This restaurant was on 51st right next to Rockafeller, so it was easy to access even on a rainy day. When we arrived at 6 PM on a Friday night, we were able to walk in without reservations as the restaurant was pretty empty.

We’ve been to Boucherie before on 6th Ave near the West Village. We expected the food here to be similar but not the same as that location. I was craving for prime rib, and disappointingly, all the other places in the city were pretty expensive at $70 and up. But this restaurant had roast beef for a reasonable price, so I was expecting it to be similar enough to satisfy that hunger.

One of our traditions that will be coming back soon is eating out on Fridays after work. We’ve been exploring the heart of midtown area and trying to walk into restaurants without reservations. We tried to go to one of the Cuban restaurants, but unfortunately they required a 40 minute wait. This restaurant wasn’t too far away, but they did have prime rib on the menu. When we arrived, it seems there was some show going on, but we were able to sit at a small table in the bar area.

We were around the Bloomingdales area running some errands back and forth around the Midtown East area and decided to take the risk of looking for a restaurant without making reservations since we normally eat dinner fairly early. This Quality Italian seems to be from the same owners of Quality Meats and Quality Bistro which are on my list. Quality Italian is a modern take on the Italian American steakhouse tradition, and the prices are probably on the mid to high range.

I’ve been deprived of noodles in the city for a number of months now. Sure, there are sometimes where I get some Taiwanese noodles, but I also love soba noodles too. I was around the Columbus Circle area, and I was scouring for some alternative ramen places. This one peaked my interest because their specialty was not ramen but soba also known as buckwheat noodles. Buckwheat noodles are supposed to be pretty healthy for you, and on a summer NYC day like today, it seems like a win when opting for cold buckwheat noodles with a cold dip.

I have always heard of tea rooms, but I never thought much of it. We had heard from friends that they had gone to the Plaza Hotel, across the street from Central Park and had a pleasant experience eating sandwiches and drinking tea. I had looked at reservations before COVID, and it was usually pretty difficult to secure reservations. I did a quick glance and made reservations easily since the city is still slowly, albeit surely, opening up.

My partner saw on their social media that some of their people had raved about this place for lunch. I took a look at the dinner menu here, and it seemed unjustly expensive for what it was. Usually a good indicator of prices starts with oysters. If a restaurant charges $4 for east coast oysters (average price should be around $3), you would expect the restaurant to have higher than usual menu prices.

Le Bernardin is a three Michelin Star restaurant in New York City that primarily deals with seafood. The head chef is Eric Ripert, who is very well known in the higher end spectrum of the culinary world. We actually saw him on the floor with a mask on talking to some of the wait staff. This particular occasion was for a birthday celebration. Our reservation was at 5 PM, and it had to be reserved a month in advance.

For this memorial weekend, we wanted to go somewhere out of town, but we had to cancel plans including non refundable bus passes. I’ve been watching the Cooking Channel as my background noise, and they had an episode of steak. My partner hadn’t been to Keen’s, and I thought this would be a great time to introduce them to it. I had been here back in 2018 for the first time, and it had a very delicious, if not the best, prime rib.