When we travel it is unusual for Dawn and I to eat 3 big meals every day. We usually eat a biggish breakfast and then a second big meal either for a late lunch or early dinner and then top up on snacks if we are hungry. This post is about what we ate for our second main meal whilst in New York City. If you want to know about breakfast see the previous post – New York… What we ate for breakfast.
Again all the opinions are our own and we are not affiliated with any places mentioned in this post.
Dawn and I are fans of Tim Burton, so we decided to visit the Beetle House when we were in New York. We wanted visit this restaurant on a Friday evening and weren’t sure how busy it would be so we made the decision to book a table. The restaurant itself isn’t huge and if you don’t know New York very well it’s not the easiest place to find. To be honest, we used Google Maps to find it. On arrival, you enter through the front and are greeted immediately by the snake from Beetlejuice which is cool. There is a table as you go in the door and the bar is on the left you can sit at the bar but I would imagine that there isn’t a lot of space for people to pass by. There are only about 7 or 8 tables in the restaurant so it is really small. However, I didn’t feel that the tables were really close together. There were people sat on all the other tables and it didn’t feel like the other diners were sat with us.
We had already decided on our drinks and ordered our first cocktails of the night. Mine was a Fleet Street Martini and Dawn’s was This is Halloween. All of the food and drinks are named after Tim Burton characters.
Each evening, there is a character from Tim Burton’s movies wandering around the restaurant conversing with diners. On the evening we visited the character was Willy Wonka. He remained in character the whole time we were there asking diners if they were the evil people who were trying to steal his ideas. It was quite entertaining.
All the food is in a Prix Fixe format, you order a starter and a main meal for a set price. I had the Cheshire Mac and Cheese to start and Dawn had Nachos Muerto and for the mains Dawn chose The Beetle House Salad and I had the Edward Burgerhands. (Since our visit the Cheshire Mac and Cheese is now a main course). The food was really tasty and we agreed it was good value. we also decided to indulge in a second cocktail, Dawn stuck with her This is Halloween but I decided to try the Nine cocktail. Now I did enjoy the Nine cocktail I preferred the Fleet Street Martini.
Although I would visit this restaurant again and would recommend a trying it to anyone visiting New York, I did have one complaint. Our waitress was not great. She was quite slow when taking our order and didn’t offer additional drinks when our glasses were empty. We sat for around 20 minutes with empty plates and glasses on our table. We tried to catch her attention a few times but she was talking with the bartender and didn’t come and serve at our table. In the end we spoke to one of the other servers to get an additional drinks order.
The following evening we decided to undertake our usual visit to Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, whenever Dawn and I visit a city in the USA one of the places we like to visit is Bubba Gump’s. I know that there are lots of restaurants that are better than going to a chain but this has become a tradition for us, we even went to London to visit the restaurant there but thats a story for another day.
To be honest this visit wasn’t usual for us as we didn’t partake in the food that we usually eat when visiting Bubba Gump’s, we had been to Sleepy Hollow earlier in the day and had a large lunch, normally I like the Dixie Fishwich. As this would be our only opportunity to visit Bubba Gump’s during our visit to New York, we decided to go any way to just have a snack and a few cocktails. Usually when we go to Bubba Gump’s we like to get the Lt Dan Pomegranate Punch cocktail, this cocktail comes with a ‘free’ glass. I have more than one of these glasses so I decided to buy a different drink. so I tried one of the summer specials.
For our food order we decided on just soup I had the soup and salad combo including Mama Blues Shrimp Gumbo and Caesar salad whereas Dawn had the New England Clam Chowder. Both of these were up to a good standard and I would definitely recommend trying the soup if visiting Bubba Gump’s for a light bite.
There are many different types of restaurant in New York this post is just a snippet of two of the places that Dawn and I decided on for this visit.
Are there any restaurants that you like to visit in more than one city?
The Traveling Nurses 