As we’re exploring the Long Island City neighborhood, this was a pretty good find. It’s on Vernon Blvd where there are a ton of neighborhoody restaurants. About 2 blocks away is a park that is in vicinity of the Long Island City sign and lets you view Manhattan from the east. This is just mango juice and thai tea. The mango juice tasted like it came from a can, so you can expect it to taste somewhat artificial.

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 is a local restaurant to Long Island City that classifies itself as an Italian Argentine restaurant. The place is super small, but it feels nice and cozy. The chicken piccata is served with capers in a lemon and butter sauce, served with roasted potatoes. This dish was actually really good. The potatoes had a nice crunch to them. The lasagna marchigiane has bechamel, bolognese, and parmigiano. The tomato sauce was pretty good.

It’s the evening and where could be a good place to get fairly traditional Cantonese style Chinese food? Dim Sum Palace! The pork ribs (páigǔ; 排骨) is pretty decent. It came out piping hot with a lump of black bean that probably was suppose to be mixed in the sauce. It’s a little different than other dim sum places, but still pretty good. The salted pepper prawns were really good.

This place is basically chirashi haven. It’s miso soup. The uni don came with hamachi and spicy tuna and shiso leaf. I wasn’t too much of a fan of the spicy tuna compared to some other places, but it was still pretty good. The spicy tuna had a very particular flavor that was masked of course when you use soy sauce with wasabi. Otherwise, the fish tasted pretty fresh overall.

This place is located near the James Hotel. They have an outdoors garden that has a decent view. The chilaquiles was basically 2 eggs, crema, salsa verde, and crispy tortillas. There wasn’t much else here. I thought it was pretty primitive and uninteresting. The salsa was good, but you wish there was some more meats and maybe avocado or something else to give it a little more flavor. The chicken blt was pretty much what it says.

This is another restaurant on my list to go. I am not crazy about Italian, but I was hungry and wanted something pretty straight forward. The lasagna bolognese came with ground beef, béchamel, and tomato sauce. The pasta consisted of several very thin sheets with a thin layer of ground beef between each. Careful though, the lasagna was piping hot. It was pretty good, but I think I would’ve preferred more sauce and more cheese as an ode to the normal lasagnas you’d normally get.

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.

This little pizza shop is down right at the edge of South/West Village close to a Shake Shack. The panzerottis are like super thin calzones that are frieds as oppose to baked. The dough that they use here is really tasty. It’s chewy, has a nice bounce, and has a very nice flavor profile to it. The dough definitely has a distinct flavor to it that makes it taste super fresh.

This little spot closed to the edge of Flatiron is a decent place if you’re into Shanghainese food and are not close to Chinatown. The passion fruit lemonade was good. You can taste the passion fruit, and it mixed well with the lemonade. The chilled marinated cucumbers were also good too although I felt the cucumbers were not marinated long enough. They were crunchy with an OK kick to them.