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.

One of the really cool things about the Astoria neighborhood that is different than Manhattan and maybe Brooklyn, is that Japanese food is reasonably priced compared to the other boroughs. I am thinking part of the cause is because of the density of the Asian demographics in the area and having to be competitive with other neighborhood restaurants. This particular restaurant was just a few blocks north of Suzuki Shokudo.

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.

A new Trader Joes opened up in Long Island City, and I was hoping to make turkey tacos with guacamole. Unfortunately, the avocados were not ripe enough yet, so I mentioned to my partner we can eat out. The first thought that came to their mind was this place because it’s one of the few nearby restaurants we have not tried yet but have seen a lot of people standing outside.

My partner is fanatical about ceviche, and I am fanatical about lomo saltado. Our level of comparison is Mario’s in Los Angeles, and there has yet been a tolerable comparison to that so far. There are not too many Peruvian options in the Williamsburg area. We’ve been to Chimu Bistro which was decent, and Llama Inn was a little too upscale. On this super sunny and muddy day after getting my hair chopped and despite all the plethora of options for anything but Peruvian, we decided to check out this restaurant based on recommendations.

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.

Woodbines is another craft beer and bar restaurant on Vernon Blvd in Long Island City that has fish and chips on the menu which my partner as craving for. At 5:00 PM, there weren’t that many people, and it was easy to get a seat inside the restaurant. Keep in mind, they do follow COVID protocols, so they asked us to check our temperature against the wall. They definitely have an outdoor setup, and that seemed to be more popular with the guests as the night went on.

Long Island City is starting to turn into another North Williamsburg but with less hipsters. There is a flurry of restaurants and stores that appear to be opening up soon. Along with Vernon Blvd, Jackson Ave is starting to show some liveliness especially around the Dutch Kills bar area. This Tacombi outpost just opened very recently within walking distance from our residence. Tacombi is a NYC chain taqueria with several establishments across the city.

We had walked over the Queensboro bridge to do some casual shopping at the Bloomingdales on Lexington on the Monday of a Memorial Day weekend. Surprisingly, there weren’t many people out and about probably due to people escaping town. Because this was around lunch time, we decided not to trek too far from the department store. This Japanese restaurant was connected indoors to the first floor of the department store. On the outside, they had private transparent glass huts with their own heaters, but we decided to eat indoors.

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.