Lucca Ristorante is an Italian restaurant in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Wedged in between the campuses of Carnegie Mellon University and The University of Pittsburgh on Craig St., its unassuming visage belies delicious delicacies and decadent deserts.

Lido is a Fredrick Douglass Ave. Restaurant Row staple. It’s one of those places that at any time, there’s a high probability that you will see someone you know from the neighborhood. You might even see a celebrity or two trying to be low-key (or HIGH-key like one day when Cornel West was there).

I live in South Harlem close to where Lido is located, and because of that I tend to overlook it since I usually like to focus on higher-end restaurants elsewhere that I don’t frequent.

In downtown Napa Valley among the handsome boutique shops and various wine tasting rooms resides the Compline Restaurant and Wine Bar.

Among the tech giants of the world and adjacent to Stanford University in the Palo Alto wilds resides Evvia Estiatorio, a Greek restaurant whos food flavors capture even the most discerning palate.

It feels GREAT to be back on the NYC Restaurant scene — how I’ve missed it! I took a long hiatus until it was evident that the COVID vaccines were working. One of the first places we decided to patronize earlier this summer was Quality Bistro, the sister restaurant to Quality Meats and Quality Italian.

In the outskirts of Atlanta across the Chattahoochee River in a town called Vinings, exists a quaint cottage restaurant called Old Vinings Inn. The small-town gives this particular restaurant a completely different feel from our usual jaunts.