Eat NYC

Two questions that you will constantly ask yourselves while traveling in New York City are: “Where are we?” and “Where is a good place to eat?”.

Thanks to Google Maps, most of you have probably solved the first problem, but in finding good places to eat, a lot of people still get confused. We do have apps like Yelp that can help us find the restaurant nearby, but there are hundreds of them and it is just impossible to look into every single one of them reading millions of reviews.

So we have decided to recommend good places to eat, where we have personally been and can guarantee a nice tasting experience, since food is such an important part of traveling.

But before we start, let us define what good places to eat are, and using that as a guideline, we will make three recommendations for you. What we consider good places to eat are those where:      

• The food, without question, is tasty
• It better be cheap
• The place and style are more “New York” rather than ordinary “American”

Radiance Tea House & Books

Located on 55^th street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues in Manhattan, Radiance is one of the most tranquil and Zen-like places in the busiest borough of New York, attracting both local tea lovers and those from the rest of the world.

You do not have to have that strong a passion for tea to go,because it is simply nice to spend 40 minutes or so tasting tea, listening to some peaceful music and releasing all the pressure this city can toss on you. Featuring with Chinese and Taiwanese tea arts, Radiance offers a wide range of tea from green teas like Dragon Well and Snow Buds to black tea, white tea and traditional Pu’er. Along with the tea, you can also treat yourselves to some delicious Dim sum such as sticky rice and pork wrapped in lotus leaf.

As Radiance is deeply rich in terms of cultural experience, you are also able to witness the process of making tea, known as tea ceremony, and immerse yourself profoundly into the pure spirit of tea-art that exists somewhere between the natural tea leaves and human handcrafts. Appointments for a minimum of 2 persons need to be scheduled before you go.

To see menus and more information, please click on: http://www.radiancetea.com/tea_menu.html

Lady M Cake Boutique

Lady M’s Couronne du Chocolat is featured by Vogue as one of the most “chicest chocolate cakes in New York” and its Mille Crépes is described by Huffington Post as one of the “reasons why living in NYC is worth it.”

However, none of the above explains why I particularly favor Lady M.

My love for Lady M's dessert comes from the invigorating taste that surprises me every time I land my lips on the soft sunken top of its chocolate cake. Especially after an exhausting walk through the blocks around Time Square, you might just want to stop by Lady M's boutique on West 59^th Street right by Central Park, picking up a classic cake like Mimosa or a rich Green Tea Mousse Cake. Trust me, a taste of Lady M will simply cheer you up for the rest of the day. 

If you wonder if this is like a chain restaurant that expands all over the place, the answer is no. Lady M is very New York – out of four cake boutiques in the U.S., three are in New York City while the only other one, in LA.

For more information about boutiques’ locations and their cakes, please click on: http://www.ladym.com/boutiques/

Café Habana – NYC’s best corn

I hate using the single word “best” because I believe there is always “better”.

Yet when it comes to the corn at Café Habana, located on Prince Street and Elizabeth Street in NoLita, I have to call it the best simply because there is no other place out there that has better corn

On its homepage online, it says, “Home of Famous Corn and Cuban!” Obviously, the owner of this restaurant is very confident about this establishment.

Well, he has some good reasons to be confident.

Besides the fact that there is always a line of people waiting either to order corn or to get their corn to go, even Hollywood celebrities from the west coast love this place. The famous romantic comedy, Friends With Benefits, shot its lunch scene there, when Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis sat by the window talking about emotional damage.

Having a film shoot there does not say anything about the food quality, but it at least shows that Café Habana is not just anywhere.

One great things about the neighborhood NoLita, is that it is not packed with as many people as SoHo is and yet it still has a lot of boutiques.

So if you love shopping and hate crowds, go to NoLita and don’t miss the corn!
Photos Courtesy of realdetroitweekly.com, pinterest, and yelp.