If you’re around the Rockafeller area and are looking for pretty decent Italian food at a not overly expensive price, this restaurant might be a good candidate. It is located on the 2nd floor of the Nordstrom NYC flagship store near the watches section. We walked in without reservations around 5:30 PM, and we were seated at the bar fairly quickly. Because Nordstrom doesn’t have the drinks menu online, I’m hoping my memory serves me well.

We continue to explore the neighborhood in Long Island City. This street is littered with all sorts of restaurants, and the recent one that got our interest was this Cuban themed restaurant. We were able to walk in without any reservations on a Friday night around 8 PM. With our meal, we were served bread with a chimichurri variant. The bread was lukewarm and not toasted much at all, but the inside was soft.

We were around Central Park near the southern side, and this was on my list of restaurants to try. This new-ish Chinese (Shanghainese) restaurant is located where Joe’s Shanghai used to be in Midtown. It’s not too far from the Apple flagship store. The stir fry snow pea leaf was mighty tasty. You can taste the subtleness of that wine, and the vegetable itself was tender and delicious. The yang chow fried rice was very uplifting and fresh too.

Here is another nice neighborhood spot off Vernon Blvd in Long Island City. Reviews seem to rave about how good this neighborhood sushi spot is, so we decided to give it a try. The peach sparkling sake was relatively inexpensive and mighty tasty. The peach flavor tasted artificial, but it was still pretty good. It felt like drinking champagne without the heavy alcohol taste and with that artificial peach sweetener.

We were near Rockafeller and were craving some bar like food. Not too far around the corner is this new-ish bar. Walking in, the interior is very open and seems pretty nice. There are a lot of tables that you can stand or sit on a high stool for drinks. You can tell it’s a pretty social atmosphere. But let’s get to the food. This is the Detroit pepperoni pan pizza.

We were just around the block looking to meet a friend for a drink and some bar food at a nearby restaurant. Turns out that restaurant was booked due to a football game, so we had to hunt for another one. This restaurant for whatever reason was dead quiet but opened at the time. The cured Long Island duck breast came with pomegranate molasses, collard greens, and kabocha squash purée.

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.