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.

I’ve always enjoyed simple menus of steak frites. We visited L’entrecote, and it was a pretty good restaurant for a similar value as this one. When I arrived at 5:20 PM and because this restaurant doesn’t take reservations for small parties, there was already a line out of the door. Fortunately the total wait time for us was about 15 minutes in line because we volunteered for bar seats if they were available.

We were on our way to get some delicious Popeyes chicken on the 7 train, and little and behold, the 7 trains were running express from Queensboro towards Flushing and were running local heading towards Manhattan. Normally the 7 runs local both ways, but they were doing track work, and it wasn’t quite clear. The next stop after Queensboro was 61st Woodside, which basically skipped our desired stop by 3 stops.

We planned to meet my partner’s friend on the wonderful Roosevelt Island. For those that haven’t been to Roosevelt Island, there are literally 3 different ways to get there: the F train, the tram (cable car), or transportation via bridge from the Astoria side. With the hopefully slim possibility of living there, my partner wanted to meet their friend and also check out local food delights. Zhongzhong Noodles had been on my list for quite a while, so I figured now is a good time to try it out.

Au Cheval is well known restaurant based out of Chicago. They specialize in elevated burgers and American dishes. When they opened a New York City location, there were crazy lines out the door. The bigger brother to this restaurant is “4 Charles” which specializes in prime rib. Both the burger and prime rib sandwich at Au Cheval are also found at “4 Charles”. I don’t have the patience to book a “4 Charles” reservation and pay the crazy insane prices for steak, so I thought I’d try some of their offerings here.

In the city, there are not too many Afghan restaurants to choose from. I’ve only had Afghani food once in my life in NorCal, and it didn’t ever make me yearn for it. However, I thought the menu looked enticing since we were looking for hummus and kabobs around Long Island City. This restaurant is located on the busy Vernon Blvd, which is becoming a happening street for this area. This location of Sami’s Kabob is their second location, whereas their first location is in Astoria.

Hanon is located in the North Williamsburg area and is literally across the street on Union St. from the Metropolitan G stop and diner. It has been awarded the Michelin 2021 Bib Gourmand award. It originated in Kamakura, Japan in the summer of 2018. I hadn’t heard about this restaurant much at all and stumbled onto this through Yelp’s Hot & New filters. I wanted to try this restaurant out because the pictures of the udon sets look quite interesting, and the price point was pretty reasonable.

Following our Disney World trip and since I started going back to the office, we are starting to do our Friday date nights again. This restaurant appeared in the local news as a brand new restaurant, so we thought we’d give it a try before the crowds started discovering this and also because we missed NYC food after being in Disney World for a week. The restaurant is a partnership between restauranteur John McDonald of Mercer Street Hospitality with partnership with Chef Justin Bazdarich (Oxomoco).

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.

After an early afternoon along the mid section of Central Park at the Natural History museum, I was looking for specifically Mediterranean restaurants within a half mile walk. As usual, we did not have reservations in mind, so we were hoping we could walk in. Sorting by the “hot and new” on Yelp, we decided on Miriam which seemed to be a second Israeli location for the owners. Fortunately, the restaurant was quite open around 4:45 PM, and we were able to walk in.