I’m back! Brace yourself for a rather long post. Or rather, not so much words but lots of pictures. ;) As you can see from the title, I’ve decided to divide my trip into two. New York being the first, Orlando & LA the second.

Yikes, snow banks on the streets of Manhattan :))

So after 2 days of waiting after my cancelled flight, I was finally able to get on that plane and fly across the Atlantic to New York Cit-ayyy! I’ve only been to NY once before this trip and I don’t remember much except visiting the Statue of Liberty. This time, my mom wanted to take the Hop on, Hop off tours. Due to freezing temperatures and traffic due to the blizzard, we waited in line for about an hour or so for a bus we could finally hop on. Suffice to say, we won’t be going to places affected by winter during winter as our toes were pretty much frozen.

Inside TAO

Anyway, it was noontime and we got off the Central Park stop not bothering to finish the rest of the tours and other stops (yeah, goodbye $$$.. :\), walked a couple blocks down looking for a restaurant while stopping to go into stores to warm up a bit. We passed by this establishment which turned out to be TAO.

Got settled in and we all ordered the lunch specials which were for $26.50 for 3 courses. Here’s some of the dishes what we had..

I had the Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce for my appetizer. Nice tender chicken although the sauce was so, so.

For my main course, I had the salmon. I loved the noodles on the bottom!

After months not being able to eat good mangoes from Cebu [;)], I had to have this dish and I did not regret it! I love the mango sorbet with the coconut milk plus the fruits.

My sister had the steak, which she said was good. The fries were awesome as well!

She also ordered the Banana Pudding with the fried banana on top!

My mom had this pomegranate sorbet with the fruits.

The next day, I told them I wanted to check out a couple of restaurants. First stop after SoHo was Momofuku Ssam Bar. Yup, gotta had to visit the place while in NY of course! We ordered 3 dishes, since we were stopping by another restaurant and didn’t want to be too full. Here’s what we had:

Clockwise from Top: Pork Buns (FTW!), Monkfish with Kabosha Squash, Peekytoe Crab and Pepitas and Beef Noodle Soup

All of them were amazing! I also had a Sake Lemonade which was quite unique; the sake taste was quite strong for me but didn’t overpower the lemonade. So it was nicely balanced.

Of course, I could leave Ssam Bar without heading next door to the Milk Bar! Got myself the Crack Pie! Surprise, surprise! Haha!

It does taste awesome! However, I found it too sweet and had to take the leftover half back to the hotel. My sister got the Cereal Milk soft serve with hot fudge. Wasn’t able to take a picture of it since she quickly scooped some up.

As mentioned above, we had another stop to go to. Shake Shack! Ordered a cheeseburger and a hotdog.

The cheeseburger was to die for! We wanted to order again to take back to the hotel but the line was quite long and we had places to see (shopping!). :( But definitely go to Shake Shack if you’re in NYC.

Saw this snowman by the Shack and just had to take a picture! ;)

Stay tuned for Part 2! :D