Day 1 Visiting NYC

A view of Columbus Circle from the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City.

Bob has business travel in New York City, so I of course am tagging along. This blog should really be entitled, "Follow Ann follow Bob Around"! Kinda how it goes. We are leaving Tuesday at 12:00pm and I am stressed. I decide to do all my laundry before we depart. My clothes are in the dryer, it is 11:45, and they are not dry. I need more time. Departure gets extended to 12:30 and I make it in the nick of time.

We are driving to New York, as it takes abougt 4.5 hours to do so. Flying is no shorter due to drive time to airport, wait time, and drive into the city. Same with the train. Bob's business partner, Mark, is at the wheel, so I sit in the back and listen to them talk business and make calls for 4.5 hours. I am used to it, and am pretty good at staring out a car window endlessly with only my thoughts. It's all good. We decide to get "Hamilton" tickets for Wednesday night, and I need to make dinner reservations for tonight, so this all keeps me busy for a bit. Our final destination is the Mandarin Oriental, which we will call home for the next three nights.

Views of the hotel entrance, lobby and cocktail lounge on the 35th floor of the Mandarin Hotel, overlooking Columbus Circle.

The Mandarin is a gorgeous hotel in a great location, which I would call the Northern part of Midtown. One enters the hotel on the street level and then takes an elevator to the 35th floor for check in, as the lower floors are office space and residential. The 18 top floors are reserved for guest and function rooms plus kitchens, housekeeping, etc. There is a bit of Dale Chihuly glasswork about, plus gorgeous floral arrangements and interesting interior design. The cocktail lounge serves all kinds of elaborate and exotic cocktails so we decide to meet there at 6:00pm for a boring glass of wine before heading out to dinner at Becco. The view from the cocktail lounge and adjacdent restaurant is insane.

After a glass of wine we set out on foot for Becco, located on New York's "Restaurant Row" in the heart of the Theater District. It is owned by Lidia Bastianich and her son, Joe, who run an Italian food empire including restaurants, a wine importing business, multiple Italian cookbooks and a cooking show on PBS. I'm probably missing something, but this is all I got right now. Becco has been in business for 25 years, so I am expecting good things!

The exterior of Becco belies its size. It is two floors high and quite deep.

We enter the restaurant and are promptly seated on the second floor, but not before getting a good look around. It is huge! Multiple rooms and a lot of depth! Our waiter appears almost immediately. There is a lot of hustle and bustle happening here. If you have a restaurant in the Theater District, you better be prepared to move people in and out! Becco's menu is diverse and most definitely Italian. There is an option to get a little pasta sampler in between your first course (Antipasti) and your entree (Secondi) for only $9 so I am definitely doing that! Gonna be fun! But first, Italian wine, olives, great Italian bread and grissini. Yum.

A few interior shots of Becco. I left about 17 rooms out. It is BIG and busy!!

Within almost no time at all after ordering, a gentleman shows up with Caesar salad on a large platter which he serves family-style. He serves a lot of it!! It is good, but I am going slowly as I know there is more food coming, specifically, pasta. I am looking forward to a few tasty bites of three kinds of pasta before my main course. The salads are cleared and fresh plates put down. We sip and enjoy our wine. Within a few minutes, a gentleman comes and puts a few tasty mushroom ravioli with a truffle sauce on my plate, plus a very generous bowl of Grana Padano cheese. Nice! Bob and I take a bite of our ravioli and it is delicious! But wait -- another gentleman with a large platter of pasta stops by and lays down some gemelli with bolognese! It looks wonderful, but this little plate of three bites of pasta is getting big! So I do a little taste and it, too, is delicious. I head for the cheese and just as I am about to sprinkle, a third gentleman comes by with a large platter of homemade spaghetti with tomato basil sauce! You have got to be kidding me!! I'm just gonna leave you with a few images. Mark skipped the pasta course and got a lovely potato leek soup because he is smart.

Please note the expression on Bob’s face as he tries to calculate how long he has to run tomorrow to work off the carbs on his plate right now. And the entree is yet to come!

By now we are all in shock from the pasta course (we just tasted a little of each) and wonder what is to come. Well here it is. Bob had ordered a lovely Pollo al Limone (Lemon chicken) with olives, capers and sauteed spinach. He does eat it all, so I suspect he probably had three strands of the spaghetti and one raviloi. Mark had ordered a Parmigiana de Pollo (Chicken Parm), and I went all caveman and got a Costoletta di Vitello alla Joe (basically, Joe's Veal Chop). I tend to order things I would never prepare at home. And don't judge me on the veal thing. All are delicious but I get maybe 4 - 5 bites of the chop (plus the whipped potato and wilted greens) before I call it quits, so when I tell the waiter to give it to someone in the kitchen, he probably will. No wasting.

Three delicious entrees at Becco in NYC’s Theater District. It was all good but you best have an appetite!!

All in all, the food was very good, the service was great and it was a short 12 block walk from the hotel. I feel like I was at someone's Nonna's house getting food shoveled in my face, except when I didn't finish I did not get yelled at and/or smacked in the head. They are very polite there. So now it is time to walk back to the hotel. The rain we experienced on the way to the restaurant has subsided so we go down Broadway through Times Square, and back to Columbus Circle to our little hotel to call it a night. Here are a few pictures. Tomorrow is another day. Be sure to check in.

A few scenes from our stroll through Times Square and down Broadway on our way home from dinner. Eye candy.