Our planned five day holiday visit to New York and Pennsylvania turned into seven days thanks to an early snow storm in Kansas and Missouri. We had some pretty decent Chinese food, some pretty mediocre Italian food and a few other things thrown in. Here’s the scorecard:

Italian: IIII

Crepes: I

Chinese: II

Sushi: I

Diner: IIII

Azeri: I

Ecuadorian: I

The four Italian meals include two pizzas and two lasagnas. The slice at Rocco’s in some forgettable place in NJ was pretty good. The Pizza Sam near LaGuardia was the definition of meh. The NJ lasagna in Elizabeth was meh. The NY lasagna was better.

Jammin’ Crepes in Princeton was good enough. Not great, but not terrible.

Chinese: The Philly Chinese was fine. The Chinese we had in Queens was excellent. We ate a dumpling place the Chinatown of Flushing. Queens has more Chinese residents than either Manhattan or Brooklyn and has essentially three Chinatowns. So, getting excellent Chinese food is not difficult.

Sushi: A tradition in the family of going to a place in Lancaster on the eve of Thanksgiving. Wasabi never disappoints. Never wows either. It is functional sushi.

Diners. We ate four meals in diners, two in the same diner. I love Neptune in Lancaster. The Apple Dumplings are great. Avoid the scrapple because it’s scrapple. We also ate at the Buccaneer in Queens. A strange place that is unique and worth it. while a diner, it simply won’t be duplicated elsewhere. The vibe a bustling funeral parlor in the best possible way. And finally, Clark’s in Brooklyn. It was good, but ordinary.

Azeri: After a long morning walk that took us from the hotel near the Staten Island Ferry in Manhattan through Prospect Park in Brooklyn, we found this gem on Yelp. It is called Old Baku. Not much English is spoken here. The bread, the lamb kebob, the plov, the tea, the cotony (phoneticish) were all lovely. This was probably our favorite meal of the trip. We like to try new things and like it even more when we like it.

Ecuadorian: We ordered delivery from the hotel in Queens. We had ceviche and chicken cutlets in a lemon sauce. We ate from the containers and with our hands. No silverware or plates were provided.

Our fun days were spent walking the outer boroughs. We had Saturday mostly free and spent it walking about ten miles from the hotel through Prospect Park. You see so much more of a city on foot.

On Monday, an unplanned day, we had a walk about in Queens and again clocked about 10 miles. We walked through an Ecuadorian neighborhood to a Chinese neighbor hood, and back through a Russian neighborhood. Fun to see it all.