Boqueria is an east coast Spanish tapas chain. The food here is quintessential Spanish shareables, including large paellas. We originally ate here with some friends in the Upper East, but we have also tried this restaurant in Flatiron. Reservations are fairly easy to secure, and it does get busy during core hours. If you have a decent sized party, this is probably a decent restaurant to bring folks that might be into family style sharing.

We came here around 8:30 PM on a rather cold Saturday evening. Typically there is a long line outside, but today people were crowded and bundled up inside. I put my name down for 2. The wait was approximately 40-50 minutes. We had contemplated leaving when we heard the wait time, but we decided to power through and wait. It was worth it. On July 1, 2023, we visited this restaurant again, and it has moved from it’s previous location.

I heard good raves about Dino BBQ from other people. The pickling of the salad is pretty good in general. In the trio of meat, you will find pork belly, chicken, and brisket. The brisket to me was just ok. I think Hometown was much better. The pork belly was also ok. Surprisingly, I liked the chicken the best. It was tender and full of flavor and not overcooked. The collard greens were not memorable and neither was the cornbread.

Walked in on a Saturday at 7 PM with no reservations, and it was packed despite it being pretty frigid outside. Luckily, we got seats at the bar. The french onion soup was really good. The gruyere cheese was nice and toasty, and the beef broth with the onions wasn’t salty like typical french onion soups. The porterhouse of course was cooked a perfect medium rare. The strip side was preferred over the filet mignon.

On our last night before heading back, we stumbled onto this cajun place. For the price per quantity, this was unmatched. The fried crawfish was delicious, albeit small. I was really digging the cocktail sauce with french fries though. That might be my new ketchup substitute now. The fried crab cakes were delicious as well. You could definitely taste more of that crab taste, and it wasn’t overly drowned by the sauce in it.

This is a semi-random shack off the highway about 10+ miles away from Girdwood. The fried chicharron and fried okra was really good. The fried ribs was had a slight crust to it with a strong glaze. I thought this was just OK. The main dish was one of those platters that had St Louis ribs, chicken thighs, and sausage. You know something is up when the coleslaw was more memorable.

We’re boarding in Girdwood, and at night we’re looking for a good restaurant to try out. Surprisingy, Girdwood has some pretty decent finds here. The fried sweet potatoes was nice. I prefer this over thin cut sweet potato fries because you can get more fullness out of this. It was served with some jalapeno-ish creamy sauce that wasn’t spicy. I would’ve preferred it having more of a kick. The pork tenderloin special was really good.

In Anchorage, there is this spot that for some reason got a lot of good Yelp reviews. Usually when you venture outside of the major cities in the U.S., you have lower expectations on the taste of food. Of course in Alaska, we’d expect high quality seafood. The cioppino was delicious. The bowl that it came in was huge, and the clams/fish/shrimp were all pretty tasty. The clam chowder was also good too.

The place was pretty dead when I went, but the pizza was excellent. In some ways I actually liked this more than Lombardis. Got a margarita pizza with pepperoni on it, and it was tasty. Would love to go back and try their stromboli or calzones as well. Final Verdict It’s a nice addition to the sparse Long Island City neighborhood. The pepperoni pizza quality and ingredients tasted really good.

Stumbled onto this just walking around. Was interested in salted pepper pork chops. All we got for a quick afternoon snack was just pan fried rice cakes with pork and the pork chops. Nothing to write home about, but the food was good for what we ordered. Note that we did not order the soup dumplings because frankly there are a gazillion other places to order this, so why would you order it here?