We went up to New York City twice in April for non-touristic reasons. During these two trips, we hung out with family and friends and had some very good food!
Saturday, April 4th
We headed up to New York Penn Station via Amtrak on the Acela from the BWI Airport Rail Station. This convenient train station has shuttle service to the airport and is easy to park at due to the large adjacent parking garages.
A new Acela is currently being rolled out, which we rode on the trip up. There have been some reported issues with these trains. We experienced a delay due to a known issues with the doors not working correctly. But, we still arrived more or less on time.
After arriving, we walked a few blocks up to check in at the Crowne Plaza HY36 Midtown Manhattan. The name identifies where it is, in Midtown, and on 36th Street. The HY attempts to link the hotel with the recent Hudson Yards development, which is nearby.
We decided to stay here due to its proximity to Penn Station and reasonable pricing for NYC. We also had a free night certificate that we used.
This hotel opened in 2017. As far as Midtown hotels go, its still pretty new. The interior is mostly still in good condition, although a bit worn in places.
The bathroom was nice and modern. Unfortunately, no tub, but at least the shower has a proper door!
There was a nice city view from our room on the 27th floor.
After checking in, we walked over to New Wonjo, a Korean BBQ restaurant, in Koreatown to meet up with family. Many older restaurants have come and go, leaving New Wonjo as the only one remaining here that still uses charcoal.
It was a fantastic meal, particularly the galbi.
After that big lunch, brought family from out of town to Brooklyn Bridge Park for the fantastic view. Historically, this was an industrial area that had become rather derelict. Now, it has been redeveloped into parkland.
Looking to the southwest, we were able to see the Statue of Liberty.
The view of Lower Manhattan from this angle includes the new One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower, despite it being on the other side of Manhattan from Brooklyn. The low buildings by the water are part of the South Street Seaport, which was also recently redeveloped. This was the former home of the Peking, a historic four masted iron hulled sailing ship. It was built in Hamburg, Germany, and has now returned after being donated for a museum there.
We’ve never walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.
After enjoying the view, we visited Lower Manhattan. This facade, which would almost fit in if we were in Athens or Rome, is the New York Stock Exchange.
We next went over to the World Trade Center. This view of One WTC is from the west side of the building. We’ve yet to ever go to the top.
We went to the south side of the building to see the 9/11 Memorial and the giant pools and cascades that mark the location of the former Twin Towers. While we have been to the museum at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania, we have not been to the museum here yet.
This pair of Mallards were enjoying the water!
While heading over to the Oculus, we noticed this red gummy bear. This is not our first time seeing this bear! It is part of WhIsBe‘s Vandal Gummy series of sculptures. We saw one when we visited Amsterdam in 2024!
These structures, which seem to be mostly shipping containers, near the Oculus had colorful murals painted on the side.
One WTC, as seen from where we were on the north side of the Oculus.
We also noticed artwork on these planters, which are actually crash barriers.
Next stop, Chicha San Chen in Chinatown. This shop is a chain from Taiwan that has expanded globally recently. We had it for the first time in Philadelphia and since then have had it in Montreal and Austin. We like this chain due to its strong tea flavor.
We had the High Mountain Pouchong Tea with Orange, and Ice Peach Oolong Tea. The tea flavor didn’t seem as strong as what we remembered. We’re not sure if its a fluke or difference in franchisee?
We did get a local promotional magnet!
In the evening, we visited the Xi’an Famous Foods in Chelsea for a light dinner. Also excellent as expected. This small chain is starting to expand outside of NYC with locations opening locally for us in the DMV.
We ended the day at Heytea in Midtown on Broadway. We had the Kale Boost Tea, Coconut Mango Boom, and King Jasmine Guava. Also excellent, although the kale was a bit too kale for our tastes!
Sunday, April 5th
After waking up, we decided to go out to get bagels. While Midtown isn’t really known for its bagels. there are three shops nearby that are well reviewed. All three are on 35th street between 7th and 8th Aves. Basically, almost around the corner from the Crowne Plaza.
On the way, we noticed this dinosaur in what seemed like a hotel lobby! Rather unexpected!
We decided to visit Best Bagel & Coffee. We only photographed half of a sesame bagel but also had an everything. Both were with the lox spread, which was excellent.
The primary reason for this trip was to watch family members perform at the famous Carnegie Hall.
An interesting experience and quite different from our usual activities when traveling or at home!
In the late afternoon, we visited the % ΔRΔBICΔ location at Rockefeller Center. We had both hot and cold Kyoto Lattes. The beans used today were excellent, particularly with the cold drink.
There are actually two locations in close proximity here. We tried to visit the other location four blocks uptown on 54th Street across from the back side of MoMA, however, it was closed due to failing a health inspection!
In the evening, we all had a big dinner at Bayon, a Cambodian restaurant. An excellent meal with excellent cooking and flavors. The most interesting item was the Baked Amok because it has some resemblance to the quenelles that we had in Lyon, although it’s still very different. Although, it was unfortunately the least good of the things that we ate today, or at least, not as good as Lyonnaise quenelles!
Monday, August 3rd, 2026
Bayon is now closed as the owner and chef decided to retire!
We saw the Empire State building in the evening as we walked to the east from the Crowne Plaza to get a snack…
We got some drinks from Heytea! The blue colored drink is the Coconut Mango Blue. The blue color comes from blue spirulina, some sort of algae. It doesn’t really affect the taste as it’s just like the non-blue mango drinks.
Monday, April 6th
A beautiful morning today! We checked out from the Crowne Plaza but left our bags to pick up later as our train isn’t until the early evening.
We had an early lunch at New Wonjo again. It was not busy as Korean BBQ more of a dinner thing, particularly on a weekday.
We forgot to take photos of the food! It was an excellent meal. We ordered two of the regular marinated galbi and the bulgogi as well as a soondobu jjigae and bulgogi bibimbap.
After lunch, we walked next door to Grace Street, a local Korean dessert cafe. They do sell tanghulu, hence this playful display with a panda, although they do not have the traditional hawthorn flavor.
The Matcha Basque Burnt Cheesecake was pretty good, although we think it might be better if it was served very cold.
As for the Dubai chewy cookie, although it had quite a bit of kataifi and a nice crunchy interior texture, it basically had no pistachio flavor. It was mainly just sweet. Pretty disappointing.
The color was actually more of the natural brownish pistachio than the greenish color seen in photos online of this product. We did complain and they mentioned that this is from a 3rd party supplier. Definitely skip this.
The Mango Madness Bingsoo had excellent milk snow and mango syrup, although the actual mango pieces weren’t too great.
We went to Chicha San Chen to get some tea again. The pineapple tea was pretty disappointing. Overall, we feel like the location in Chinatown is the worst of their locations that we’ve been to. The other locations we’ve visited, in Philly, Austin, and Montreal, all had a much stronger tea flavor in their drinks.
We got back to Penn Station rather early. We walked over to Amtrak‘s Metropolitan Lounge in the Moynihan Train Hall as we had a single visit lounge pass. This is our first visit to this lounge, which replaced the old dungeon that was the lounge in Penn Station.
They had some warm sandwich options as well as decent bagels. Overall, quite a nice space to wait for the train.
We boarded a Northeast Regional for the trip back down to BWI. This was originally supposed to be on the Acela, however, that train was cancelled a few weeks ago. So, we ended up in Business class on the Northeast Regional. Which is perfectly fine as the Acela is only a bit faster.
We were on time out of Penn Station and most of the way down to BWI. However, we ended up being delayed in the tunnel under Baltimore for some unknown reason. It did seem like we were waiting for a train to pass in the opposite direction before continuing.
We arrived late at BWI and on the northbound platform, which is not typical but happens. They then opened the doors. Unfortunately, that was a mistake because half of the northbound platform is under construction and fenced off with giant protruding pieces of metal on the platform! Oops. A conductor happened to walk by just after the doors opened so we notified him of the mistake. So they had to close all the doors and manually open just the cafe car door to let everyone out!
Friday, April 24th
We again took the Acela up from the BWI Airport Rail Station to Penn Station in New York City. Our room at the Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel was not ready yet so we left our bags and went to get lunch.
We had lunch at The Dolar Shop, a hot pot restaurant from Macau. For soup bases, we got the Chef’s Creamy Pork Broth, which came with tripe and chicken, as well as the Spicy Broth / Tomato Broth.
For meat, we ordered the The Dolar Shop Shrimp Pate…
And the Selected Beef and Lamb Platter.
We were full but still decided to get an additional portion of Beef Short Rib, which seems to be referred to as the Premier Cru Beef Thin Slices. This was fantastic!
We didn’t add much else. Overall, it was an excellent, although expensive, lunch. They do have 20% off during the day as a happy hour discount which saved us a bit of money.
After lunch, we walked a short distance to ChaHalo, a chain from Xi’an, on St. Marks. They still had this Christmas display despite it now being the end of April!
We ordered the Osmanthus Oolong Milk Tea. It was pretty good. The space the shop is located in was familiar to us, although we couldn’t remember what was there before.
We received a promotional Chinese New Year magnet with our order. It is a cross promotional piece with the Shaanxi History Museum and is inspired by an artifact, 鎏金舞马衔杯纹银壶, at the museum from the Tang Dynasty.
We decided to walk off our big lunch by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge! We took the subway over to Brooklyn so that we would have a view of Manhattan in front of us for the walk.
Although it was a weekday afternoon, it was still somewhat busy. The view was, of course, excellent.
Unlike most bridges that one can walk across as a pedestrian, the walking path is in the center of the bridge and elevated above the vehicular lanes on either side. The walkway is a wood plank path with larger areas below the bridge’s two pylons.
Afterwards, we made our way up back to Midtown where we looked at Macy’s Spring display at their flagship Herald Square store.
We dropped by the Heytea near Macy’s where we had their seasonal Golden Oolong Yuzu.
We decided to walk through Macy’s to take a look at their floral displays inside, part of the Macy’s Flower Show.
It was quite a massive display! This event actually just started yesterday.
There were groups of birdhouses, each representing one of the states. Local birds and flowers were present.
A view from above.
We walked back over to the Renaissance to check in. Like the hotel we stayed at earlier in April, this is a recently built hotel. It opened a little more than 10 years ago in 2016.
The room was a good size and modern in appearance.
The bathroom was nice and modern as well.
The view from the room was pretty similar to the view we had at the Crowne Plaza.
We had dinner at Xie Bao, a Chinese crab roe restaurant. We had noticed it during our previous trip and wanted to give it a try.
We were a bit surprised that the pre-meal side dishes included a bit of popcorn!
We ordered the Crab Roe and Pork Mooncake…
Crab Roe Over Noodles…
Yangzhou Three Diced Steamed Bao…
And Crab Roe and Pork Soup Dumplings.
Overall, the flavors were lighter than expected. The Xiaolongbao tasted decent but they were not nearly as soupy as Nan Xiang, which we’re quite used to. Like lunch, this was a pretty expensive meal. Overall, it was a little disappointing.
The view a block away from Times Square as we started to walk back.
We dropped by the Heytea on Broadway, a few blocks uptown from Herald Square, where we ordered the Pistachio Cloud Jasmine Coconut and Crisp Grape Boom.
We then returned to the Renaissance.
A nice evening view from our room!
Saturday, April 25th
We awoke to an overcast sky.
Complimentary breakfast for Platinum and higher members of the Marriott Bonvoy program is served in the hotel’s lounge. It was absolutely terrible! Much worse than Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and IHG’s limited service properties.
We decided to walk to the west to visit the High Line as it has been a few years since we’ve walked along it.
But first, we went to take a look at Hudson Yards. The last time we were here, there was still significant construction going on and the Vessel was not yet complete.
There was a promotional red shoe for The Devil Wears Prada 2!
The Vessel was originally supposed to be free to visit. But now, its of course turned into a cash grab.
There is an entrance to the High Line on the northwest corner of Hudson Yards. However, that entrance was closed. We followed the High Line route west along 34th Street, then the West Side Highway, and then back to the east along 30th Street.
We did manage to get up on the High Line at around 30th St. and 11th Ave, at the southwest corner of Hudson Yards. By now, it had started to rain.
We walked into the Hudson Yards mall. Like Macy’s, there was a floral display, Flora, here as well. It just started yesterday and was produced by Fleurs de Villes, a company that does floral displays like this.
A display within the Louis Vuitton store.
We decided to try Blue Bottle Coffee, a chain from Oakland, California. It is owned by Nestle but currently in the process of being sold to the Chinese owner of Luckin Coffee.
We first encountered Blue Bottle Coffee when there was a location in RYSE, a hotel we stayed at in Seoul. We’ve seen their shops around the world but this is our first time trying it. We tried their Iced NOLA. It was very good!
The Vessel, as seen from the 2nd floor by Blue Bottle Coffee.
We walked over to the 7 Train station to head to lunch. Oddly, despite its proximity to the station, we didn’t seem to find a direct indoor connection from inside the mall.
We decided to have lunch at Fan Szechuan, a restaurant just a little bit to the north of Chinatown. The restaurant is actually from Deer Park in Suffolk County on Long Island. We were a bit early for their noon opening time. So, we ended up walking around Essex Market to pass the time. It was pretty quiet in the market.
We noticed this bear at the entrance. It is a BE@RBRICK. We first saw one in Tokyo at the Mesm where there was one in our room. Once you’ve seen one, you start noticing them all over the world!
We ordered the Braised Pork Belly with Preserved Mustard Greens and the Squirrel Whole Fish. The fish dish name comes from its appearance, although we’ve never had one that actually looks like a squirrel. While we thought the two items we ordered were decent, it wasn’t particularly special.
Maybe we should have ordered Szechuan cuisine, although the fish is supposed to be one of this restaurant’s specialties. Maybe.
The ratings for this restaurant are very good. We visited because we saw it YouTube when Phil Rosenthal visited. As much as we enjoy his Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil, well, we probably will skip any future Asian recommendations! Gwangjang Market in Seoul was also a huge bust in 2024, although is likely due to it becoming popular as a result of Netflix, YouTube, and social media.
After, we got tea at FIFTYLAN, a chain that has a number of shops in NYC. We’re not sure about their corporate history but it seems like they are a franchisee of a Taiwanese tea business. It was pretty decent.
We next visited I’Milky. They’re also from Taiwan, although it seems like all of their stores in Taipei may have closed and their i-milky dot com domain no longer resolves.
We got the Golden Strawberry Mango Pomelo. While there seemed to be a good amount of strawberry content, everything was just overwhelmed by the mango flavor.
We returned to our room to get ready for this evening’s event, a friend’s wedding.
The wedding was on Long Island near a LIRR station. Previously, LIRR only operated out of Penn Station but now they also have service at Grand Central. We went via Penn Station as it is right here by the hotel. Penn Station was a dump for most of my lifetime. Parts of it are much nicer now, although there are still plenty of areas in need of serious renovation.
Sunday, April 26th
We decided to head out to Flushing today. It’s easy to access from Penn Station via the LIRR Port Washington Branch. After arriving, we walked around the area and visited the Tangram shopping mall. This recent development has two floors filled with mostly restaurants, a few shops, and oddly, a swimming pool.
After spending some time at Tangram, we walked around the corner to Chongqing Lao Zao, a hot pot restaurant that opens at 11am. We actually walked by earlier when there was no queue. There was a small queue when we arrived but it wasn’t too many people.
We were seated a few minutes after they opened. The interior is designed to have a rustic historical appearance.
A small plate to munch on.
The order form.
We opted for 3 broths – mild spicy beef tallow, green chili, and Chinese herbs. The specialty here is the spicy beef tallow, which is bottom left here. And yeah, that’s the mild variant…
Some dipping sauce from the sauce bar, which was pretty much right by our table.
We got three plates of meat – the sliced lamb, sliced beef, and marbled beef. The marbled beef was unfortunately quite a disappointment as it ended up being too firm after light cooking. We felt the sliced beef, the lower priced beef option, was better. The lamb was pretty good, much better than the typical hot pot lamb.
The shrimp paste with bamboo was something different and an accidental purchase as we actually wanted just the shrimp paste. It is basically shrimp paste wrapped in bamboo. Still good if unexpected.
The potato glass noodles were interesting. They were very thick, making them different from the much thinner style of glass noodles that we’re used to having.
We had pea shoots as our sole vegetable plate.
The tofu skin was pretty much as it is everywhere. It soaks up lots of flavor.
The homemade black tofu had a flavor and texture that was pretty different from the standard tofu. Perhaps a bit of an acquired taste though.
The Tai Chi Beef comes in a yin yang pattern with one side spicy and the other numbing.
It is then mixed together to prepare for cooking. It was recommended that we eat it last. It was pretty spicy!
Overall, an excellent hot pot lunch!
There was a Matcha Cafe Maiko shop in the Tangram mall. This is our favorite matcha soft service chain in the US and originates from Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii. We saw it earlier but it was not open yet.
The matcha soft serve here was probably the best we’ve had in the mainland US. Almost as good as their original Waikiki location!
We next visited Molly Tea, a chain from Shenzhen. The name refers to the Chinese word for Jasmine rather than the Western female name or the drug. We noticed that it was pretty busy so decided to try it. We got the Premium Jasmine Milk Tea and White Champaca Oolong Milk Tea. It ended up being a very long wait! The Jasmine tea was the better of the two with an excellent floral taste and just a bit of sweetness. The oolong tea was pretty good too, just not as good as the jasmine.
We ended up taking our tea to the south side of Tangram where there is a small outdoor plaza with seating.
June, 2026
The franchisee of this location and three other locations in NYC is in a contractual dispute with the parent Molly Tea company. As a result, the stores are currently rebranded as ? Tea. It is unclear what is going to happen here.
After drinking our tea, we continued on through Tangram.
We visited Tea Scholar, which is across the street from Molly Tea. We noticed this shop while we were waiting for our Molly Tea order.
We ordered the Orchid Oolong Tea and a hot Scholars Rock Oolong Tea. They had a promotion where you get a little clay tea pot when ordering two drinks. They actually put a bit of water and dry ice into it which gives a steam effect. Both teas were excellent. The orchid tea was pretty similar to the jasmine tea we had at Molly Tea.
We dropped by Bao’s Pastry on our way back to the LIRR station. This bakery from Beijing was extremely popular as we saw many people throughout Flushing with their distinctive yellow bags! We got two Matcha Milk Cakes, two Seaweed Crispy Floss Cakes, two Coffee Crispy Floss Cakes, two Golden Yolk Pastries, and a bag of Hawthorn Soft Pastries.
The branding is excellent and quite cute. The characters resemble Goombas from Super Mario!
We returned to the Renaissance at around sunset.
A quick photo session before eating some of our Bao’s Pastries!
The matcha milk cakes seemed like they were the most perishable so we ate them first.
Monday, April 27th
A beautiful morning!
For breakfast this morning, we went to Liberty Bagels. This is a pretty new shop having opened in 2018 and is one of the three shops on 35th Street that we considered visiting when we were here earlier in April. We got an everything bagel with lox and scallion cream cheese. While it was good, we think Best Bagel is better. We’ll have to try the 3rd, Apollo Bagels, some other time.
The Empire State Building towering above as we walked over to the Herald Square subway station.
We had a slightly early lunch at King’s Kitchen on Mott Street in Chinatown. We got the Preserved Meat Clay Pot and the Special Clay Pot with Eel, Salted Chicken, and Spare Ribs with Black Bean Sauce. Good, although a lot of rice!
Mott Street in front of the restaurant was closed due to construction.
We went across the street to Molly Tea where we had a hot Premium Jasmine Milk Tea and a cold Peach Oolong Milk Tea. Both had excellent flavor!
Mott Street, again.
We then walked over to Xi’an Famous Foods, which was two blocks away.
We had the Spicy & Tingly Beef Muscle Hand-Ripped Noodles. Excellent flavor and noodles. If only all the beef pieces were the tender ones!
We decided to give Chicha San Chen another try today. We got a Honey Osmanthus Oolong Tea with Taro Balls. While it was decent, it still wasn’t as good as the other Chicha San Chen locations we’ve been to. For whatever reason, the tea flavor here is not as strong.
On our way back to the Renaissance, we stopped by Heytea for one last drink on this trip. We got the Mango Grapefruit Boom. It had an excellent mango flavor, although you can’t really taste the tea at all.
We took advantage of the 4pm guaranteed late checkout provided to Platinum and higher members of the Marriott Bonvoy program.
On our way to Penn / Moynihan Station, we stopped by Best Bagel to see what we could buy 10 minutes before closing time. We got the last 5 sesame bagels and a plain bagel. This will be breakfast, or possibly a snack, in addition to the Bao’s Pastry that we bought yesterday in Flushing.
And that’s it! We had an uneventful trip back down to the BWI Airport Rail Station via the Northeast Regional. Like our previous trip, it was supposed to be on the Acela but that train was cancelled.