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. The spinning doors don’t actually open till 5 PM sharp, so there wasn’t too much of a benefit to arrive before.

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. There are some other affliate locations in the city such as Kent’s Ale House in North Williamsburg.

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 been to the Flatiron location of Tacombi several times before, but I’ve never made a proper Tacombi post. Because we actually took pictures of the food in the new LIC location, we’ll share those here.

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. Dinner reservations were difficult to make, so we opted for a lunch reservation instead which was quite easy.

Summary

This restaurant had been on my peripheral for a while because of the lasagna dish. I didn’t decide to try to book a reservation until I learned it was awarded its first ever Michelin Star. I had tried a few times on Resy, but always missed it. Fortunately, I was able to land a reservation on a weekend at 5 PM EST. The restaurant itself is in West Village and felt like a typical trendy cafe in the area. The tables were social distanced, and had a nice romantic setting.

Summary

This Indian restaurant has been around for a few years and has actually garnered a lot of positive attention. I had seen this on Seamless a few times, and it was close to where we live such that walking to here would be very easy. When you walk in, the atmosphere is pretty loud and lively. The walls are decorated with prints of newspapers, so it presents itself as a rather trendy place.

Summary

Every few weeks, we make a market run, and we pass by this small area in Astoria that is relatively close to the market. Nearby, they have a few chain restaurants as well as some NYC specific restaurants. This Mexican restaurant seems to always be happening, so we decided to give it a try this time around. They have a ton of tables, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem securing an indoor or outdoor table.

Summary

I was supposed to meet my partner the next block at Casa Enrique, but for some reason they mistook a Japanese restaurant for a Mexican restaurant and ended up here. They found it weird that there were no lines, whereas I went to Casa Enrique and encountered a line. Because Casa Enrique doesn’t take walk-ins and the line was getting rather long, we decided to just eat here, and to my surprise, it was a good substitute.

Summary

I haven’t frequent the heart of the East Village for quite some time. Walking through St. Marks, it’s pleasant to see that the city is slowly coming back alive. People still walk around with masks for the most part, and some restaurants have closed. Despite all this, the energy is slowly coming back alive. Since we were in this area and because now everyone is out and about, it’s getting difficult to do walk-in dinings. Next door there was Curry Ya, but there were too many people. So we decided to try out this Vietnamese restaurant since there weren’t many people.