My partner on a late Saturday evening was planning to get some food with their friend, so that means I can venture out on my own. As people know from reading this site, I’m a ramen fiend. I love to try all sorts of ramen, and I never mind eating it by myself. This ramen location recently opened only a few weeks ago, and I definitely prefer early dinners. It’s located very close to the 7 train Court Sq stop, and is just around the corner from the Long Island City Trader Joe’s.

I cannot recall the last time I’ve cracked open crab shells and eaten a huge chunk of crab meat. In Los Angeles, I used to go to a lot of seafood buffets, and they would always have a plethora of snow crab legs that you could eat for hours on end. We decided today to venture out to this all you can eat seafood buffet in the city. We were able to walk in with no reservations for 2 around 5:30 PM on a Friday.

Having been to Sweet Chick before in North Williamsburg, I vaguely remember this place having pretty good crust. I often get Pies N Thighs confused with this. In Williamsburg, there’s always a line outside, so when we walked by here with no line, we decided on a spur of the moment to try this out. When you sit at a table, there is a QR code that you can scan and even place your order.

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 have been here before prior to the pandemic when it was a weigh by the pound buffet-style. My partner took me here once because they had been here before several times and said it was their favorite. However that one time, I didn’t really enjoy it because the meat was all overcooked, and the rest of the sides were very mediocre. They agreed with me and were surprised by how mediocre it was on that day.

This ramen place is pretty close to where I work. It’s located on 48th and 6th ave and is very close to Rockafeller. There is no way you would know of this restaurant unless you were either intentionally looking for it, or if you saw the ground floor sign that indicated this was upstairs. I had some time during my lunch, and decided to take a quick spin to see how this was compared to other ramen spots.

It was my partner’s friend’s birthday, and they had asked for my partner to make a reservation to a Michelin Star restaurant that was not overwhelmingly expensive (< $120 per person before wine). My partner started looking for more contemporary cuisines, and stumbled onto this which was a bit below the radar of restaurants. I remembered looking at the menu a while back, and nothing really struck me as a must-have … but I’m always open to trying to prove myself wrong.

This Peruvian restaurant was also on my partner’s list of cheap eats to try. The menu was quite similar to the prior Peruvian restaurant, Caravan Chicken we went to a few weeks ago. It’s conveniently located off the Ditmars N/W train on Ditmars itself. We arrived here at 7 PM, and there was no line nor patrons inside. We were not sure what to make of this considering how much we enjoyed the last restaurant.

Carne Mare is an Italian chophouse restaurant from Andrew Carmellini. He has opened a number of restaurants in NYC already as well as other places in the U.S. The thing that attracted mem to this restaurant was I was craving for prime rib, and then I noticed they had this gorgonzola cured strip-loin that people have been raving about. To add to this, they also offer baked alaska which is basically one of my favorite desserts of all time.

Lately, we’ve been looking for budget type of restaurants outside of the main areas of Manhattan. This restaurant came at a suggestion from my partner’s friend. It’s located pretty close to us on Broadway in Astoria and fairly close to the N subway. It really is a no frills restaurant with a lot of local take out and dine-in traffic. We arrived here around 5 PM on a Sunday evening, and finding a seat for 2 people was pretty straight forward.