Two Days in The Big Apple

This hotel may be a costly one, but I got a room from Priceline for a budget rate. Park Central is a pretty nice place to stay. I'm not sure I'd pay $250 a night for it, but I was happy.

The lobby was very sleek, with black furniture that looked very art-deco style. The service for check-in was friendly and helpful.

The rooms were a nice size. Mine had a king-size bed with two soft, comfy chairs, a desk and chair, and lots of space. I was especially surprised at how large the bathroom was. It had no really special amenities--just all your most basic ones for the bathroom, a coffee maker, heat, and a TV. I didn't spend too much time here, though. The city was waiting for me.

The concierge was very helpful in telling me how to navigate the subway system. If you're planning a trip there, make sure that you get some help. It can be pretty confusing. He also helped pick a good place for dinner that night.

The hotel had a nice-looking restaurant, but right next door was the famous "Carnegie Deli". I tried that and much more...

Unfortunately, I didn't pick up any business cards or a menu to take home with me, but this is a place that you need to go to. My older brother took me to this little hole-in-the-wall near NYU. The inside is very plain, but when you looked at the menu, you feel right at home.

Peanut Butter and Co. produces its own brand of peanut butter, which you can buy in a lot of different places. Flavors like dark chocolate, white chocolate, spicy, and a few others, along with regular, smooth, and chunky are available. Not everything on the menu has peanut butter, they also have a side menu with other kinds of sandwiches and apparently a darn good grilled cheese sandwich.

The peanut butter sandwiches were amazing. They had every kind of sandwich you could imagine, but with peanut butter on it. I had the Elvis Sandwich, which was chunky PB with bananas, honey, and bacon. Now that's a sandwich. My brother had the same. I was very tempted, however, to try the spicy peanut butter sandwich with grilled chicken... maybe next time.

Another place I have to talk about, even though I have no idea how we even found it. It's another place where you'll just have to look up. This tiny hole-in-the-wall is down near the Financial District in Manhattan. It was on the Food Network on "The Best of.." My brother and I found the most wonderful donuts you can find on the planet.

We got three donuts and split each of them. Don't be surprised, however--they're not like Krispy Kremes or Dunkin Donuts. These are gourmet donuts. We tried the toasted walnut donut, the organic orange zest donut, and the Bavarian chocolate donut with rasberry filling. Each one was huge and fresh.

This little place is way out of the way, in a section of the city that looked like an area with a lot of senior housing and buildings. If you can find this place, go there and let me know what you thought.

I've been to this chain of restaurants before, but now there's one right in the heart of Times Square. This restaurant is based on my favorite movie of all time "Forrest Gump". The restaurant has Southern American cuisine, which is very good but not as good as it tastes in the South, of course. Throughout the restaurant they have costumes, set pieces and props from the movie. It also has all sorts of neat little things like signs and random junk from the deep South.

The service was really good on this visit. The waiter was one of those struggling actors who was really fun to talk to. The food was pretty good. I had a shrimp po' boy, which I've had much better in New Orleans, but it was still good. My friend had a nice chicken Caeser salad, and my brother had "Shrimp New Orleans". The Shrimp New Orleans is sauteed shrimp in a really good sauce with rice and bread. The best part is dunking that delicious bread into the sauce. For dessert, I had their bread pudding, which was okay. I felt like it had to much whiskey in the sauce and the pudding was too cooked. Try it if you want, but go somewhere else for dessert.

At the end of the meal, the server quizzed us on our knowledge of the movie. It was fun to see how much we knew, although I wish there'd have been a small prize.

If you have a large group in New York, then this is the place to go. This is perhaps one of the best Italian restaurants in New York. It is extremely popular, though, so make sure you make reservations before going. The restaurant is huge and always packed. The menus are largely printed on the walls. Everything is served family-style there. A dish will cost between $20 and $30 dollars but will easily feed four to six people. You get appetizers first with your run-of-the-mill stuffed mushrooms, calamari, salads (you must get the Caeser--it's excellent), and soups.

For dinner, you order a pasta dish or two, a few meat dishes (the chicken piccata is one of my favorites), and some vegetable dishes. All are excellent here.

For dessert, they have a sampler platter filled with fresh seasonal fruit, tiramisu, New York cheesecake, and other wonderful things.

I happened to be with 12 people on this excursion, but if you only have a few people, you won't need to order as much as I did. The service is very friendly, and the restaurant is right next to Times Square, in the middle of all the action. This is a good place.

There's nothing like a little family-run restaurant. When you're walking down Mulberry Street in Little Italy, it can be a little overwhelming deciding where to have dinner. Hosts are out on the street telling you to come to their restaurant for dinner, and all of them seem nice. We chose Amici because it had reasonable prices. The host’s name was Fabrizio (very Italian). There were pictures all over the walls of family and people eating at the restaurant. It was a small but nice room.

The food was pretty good. I felt that the portions were a little smaller than I expected, but it still tasted good. I had the chicken marsala, which tasted very fresh, and the sauce was good. The pasta on the side was covered in the sauce, too, and I like when they do that at Italian restaurants. It felt like homemade cooking, which is why I liked it here. You can't go to any chain restaurant and find food like this because it's not as fresh. If you go to Little Italy, seek this little hole-in-the-wall out.