Honest Bao

NYC has a reputation for emptying your wallet. 💸 But after the steakhouse bill, I went looking for Japanese food that delivers without the damage — lunch, dinner and dessert. All three (plus one) of these came in at sensible money. 1. Ramen Ishida (Lower East Side) 🍜 Chef-owner Yohei Ishida, previously worked i Ippudo, opened here in 2017. Nice small menu ✨ Decor & Ambience A small, cosy spot — and on a hot afternoon, an absolute sauna. Open kitchen, no air conditioning. I left soaked through. You've been warned. Clam and mushroom, a small hint of clam flavour 🍽️ Food & Drinks The menu is short, which for a little ramen shop is always a good sign: focus on a few things and do them properly. New Tokyo Style - again, a solid one I had the clam and mushroom , my partner the new Tokyo style . Quality ramen. The broth is rich and well made, the chicken tender and juicy. The noodles were OK, though a little strong on the alkaline note, and the egg was short on flavour. P...

Search "best steakhouse in NYC" and you'll fall into a rabbit hole.   🥩 Everyone has an opinion, some of the contenders are near-impossible to book, and the rest split the room. I ended up at La Tête d'Or , ranked 34th in the World's 101 Best Steak Restaurants for 2026. Hopes were high. Nice decor and vibe, sorry for the dark photo from my poor old phone A Little History 📜 La Tête d'Or is the first steakhouse from Daniel Boulud , the Lyon-born chef behind NYC institutions including Daniel. It opened in late 2024 inside One Vanderbilt, taking over the grand space that housed his Le Pavillon. The name nods to Lyon's Parc de la Tête d'Or, so this is a French chef's take on the American steakhouse. Truely freshly made salad ✨ Decor & Ambience Handsome and seriously spacious. If I'm honest, the vibe is very close to Monkey Bar — and, sadly, it shares the same flaw. The tables are set so close together that you can follow your neighbours' ...

Some restaurants you visit for the food. Some you visit for the room.   🐒 Monkey Bar is firmly in the second camp, and it has the pedigree to back it up. nice decor and cosy vibe A Little History 📜 Monkey Bar opened in the 1930s inside Midtown's Hotel Elysée and spent decades as a celebrity haunt, all monkey murals and martinis. It's changed hands several times since and has now been revived by the group behind 4 Charles Prime Rib and Au Cheval . In other words: the crew responsible for some of the hardest tables in New York. Tables are very close to each other ✨ Decor & Ambience   Retro and grand, and genuinely lovely. We arrived for an early weekday dinner before a Broadway show and the bar was already packed, while the dining room was quiet — for about ten minutes, until it filled around us. My one gripe: the room is spacious, but the tables are crammed right up against each other. Monkey Bar isn't pretending to be Michelin-level, but it isn't budget either...

After days of lobster, butter and pasta, my Asian soul woke up again. 🥢  The moment I landed in NYC, I needed rice, broth and chilli. With the city's huge Asian population, quality is never in short supply. Let's start with Korean. 1. Okdongsik 🥇 Busy night on weekday with a small queue Gomtang simply means a bone broth simmered for hours until it turns rich and gentle. It's traditionally made with beef. Dweji means pork, and pork broth is the pride of Busan , where post-war refugees turned cheap pork bones into the city's beloved dwaeji gukbap . It's humble, restorative, everyday food. Typical Korean meal set up, kimchi tasted good Chef Ok Dong-sik built his name on stripping that bowl right back: one perfect pork broth, clean rather than heavy. Then Netflix's Culinary Class Wars (흑백요리사) put him on screens worldwide, and the queues followed. Love this  dwaeji gukbap 🍽️ Food & Drinks   A short queue on a weekday evening, around 20–30 minutes. Worth ...

We're sticking with seafood in Boston,  but swapping the bread roll for a bowl of pasta. 🍝 Next up is The Daily Catch, one of the city's most talked-about seafood-and-pasta spots. It has three branches, and the newer Waterfront one takes reservations, which makes it a lifesaver for time-poor tourists like me. ✨ Decor & Ambience   This is a proper local spot. It's simple and no-frills, and the room was buzzing. Don't expect polish, though: our menus still had bits of food stuck to them, and the tables are pretty small for two. A very busy night 👋 Service   The staff were helpful throughout, which made up for the squeeze. But the pasta took a while to get served (30min), Even thought it was a busy night, it was still too long 🍽️ Food & Drinks   Fried calamari: crispy, full of flavour and a generous portion. I loved it. Generous portion, pipping hot, a quality calamari Black Pasta Aglio Olio: the signature dish, and you can see why. The squid-ink pasta i...

Welcome to the USA East Coast Series! 🇺🇸  Over the next few posts, I'm taking you through the spots I ate my way around in NYC and Boston. First up is Boston, and when in Boston, it has to be lobster. A Very Short History of the Boston Lobster 🦞 These days lobster is a luxury, but in colonial New England it was so common that it washed up on the shore in piles. It got used as fish bait and fertiliser, and it was fed to servants and prisoners. Local legend says some of them complained about eating it too often. Imagine that. That changed in the 1800s. Railways and canning took New England lobster to cities across the country, demand shot up, and the "poor man's protein" became a luxury. The lobster roll came along in the early 20th century and is usually credited to Perry's in Milford, Connecticut, in the late 1920s. Today it's New England's most famous sandwich, and Boston takes it very seriously. So Many Choices, So Little Time ⏰ Boston has seafo...

Food halls  are supposed to be the cheap option. Someone forgot to tell Saint Paul's Market. A quick bit of background: it opened on 25 September 2025 on Mary Ann Street, just off St Paul's Square, in a converted Jewellery Quarter warehouse. It's a £1.5m team-up between the crew behind Liverpool's Baltic Market, Independent Birmingham and Buddha Belly — 10,000 sq ft, 500 seats over two floors, eight independent kitchens and two bars. Over 300,000 people have been through the doors in year one, so they're clearly doing something right. Character building with modern industrial decor ✨ Decor & Ambience  And this is where it shows. Compared to the Chinatown food courts, the management here is in a different league: smarter decor, properly maintained, and a genuinely good buzz. It's the kind of place that works when your group can't agree on anything. 🍽️ Food & Drinks I went on a weekend late afternoon. Footfall was still healthy, but several kitchens w...

When Purnell's closed in October 2024, Birmingham lost its shiniest star. Trillium is the Yummy Brummie's answer — and he's landed it. Quick history for the uninitiated: Glynn Purnell won Birmingham's first ever Michelin star at Jessica's back in 2005, opened his own place, Purnell's, in 2007, and held a star there from 2009 until rising costs and falling bookings forced him to close after 17 years. In December 2025 he launched Trillium on Snow Hill Queensway — same ambition, none of the white-tablecloth stiffness. Nice chic decor but very hot on a heat wave day, I was soaking throughout the meal ✨ Decor & Ambience  Properly chic. Wine-stained reds, plum and petal pink, woodland-ish lighting, and an open kitchen where you can watch the chefs quietly working. Grown-up without being stuffy. Fluffy bread with nice bold dipping sauce 👋 Service  Warm, attentive, and genuinely useful. They walked us through the menu without a hint of that fine-dining sniffiness. ...