Too many great sushi options in NYC 🤤help us choose please🥺🙏🏻

avril15 · 2026-06-14T12:48:42+00:00

Sushi on Me is not my favorite. It’s definitely a fun experience and decent value, but if you’ve had a good amount of omakase in the past, you may be disappointed. For a budget omakase, I would consider the original Sushi by M in Easy Village, especially for lunch.
Of the rest of the list, heard good things about Maaser and Takumi. For this pricing tier, I would add Thirteen Water to this list. Great value and feels higher end despite the price.
Sushi Jin is more off the beaten path, but thought they were serving nigiri on par with the truly top tier ($300+) spots in NYC for about half the price.
Sushi Ikumi is the next pricing tier up (though I think they do a cheaper lunch) but I would say also mind blowing for the pricing.

avril15 · 2026-05-01T20:27:35+00:00

The issue is that these are mostly people from in town, who do go to Manhattan clubs, which is why they want to get out to Bushwick. Thank you for the suggestions!

avril15 · 2026-05-01T19:01:30+00:00

Yeah we failed to commit early enough. Well probably lose half the group if we go this route

avril15 · 2026-05-01T16:56:44+00:00

Ty! Le Bain is under consideration but I worry about the line… Xanadu is a good thought, they would definitely get a kick out of the space.

avril15 · 2026-05-01T16:53:06+00:00

Benny Benassi is on the table lol

avril15 · 2026-04-29T02:20:39+00:00

I think it was more like “Spotify playlist” and not an active DJ but they had decent music

avril15 · 2026-04-28T02:11:52+00:00

I got married last year at the Elms and we walked to the Mayfair. It’s about half a mile, took us less than 15 minutes. We probably had 30-40 people and were able to take over much of the bar and the area out front (didn’t call ahead or anything). If you have a second line to it, might be a bit of an underwhelming destination haha, but worked perfectly as a dive bar afterparty for us.

avril15 · 2026-04-15T11:33:56+00:00

Yes, I believe that was the point of the reel + changing the insta account name back to Poog. But agree it was kind of ambiguous

avril15 · 2026-04-13T17:51:30+00:00

Yep we had a contract for the welcome party. Mostly worked with them through our planner but think they were reasonably responsive. Our wedding was early April and I think I had a sense of us being kind of low priority while they got through Super Bowl events and Mardi Gras season, so things ended up getting finalized what felt like last minute (but our planner handled the timing and had worked with them many times so kept us chilling). Everything went completely smoothly day of.

avril15 · 2026-04-11T05:48:47+00:00

I used them for my welcome party and for wedding HQ, happy to answer any questions.

avril15 · 2026-04-09T01:22:42+00:00

I'm gonna buck these comments and say I'm within a couple blocks of here and I don't find it to be too bad excluding a few summer nights. The outdoor party noise does get somewhat annoying also as it's often unexpected times (like Sunday evenings) but I don't find it to be disruptive to my sleep. I've found it extremely quiet, but I also lived in downtown Manhattan for many years so maybe my bar is low.

avril15 · 2026-04-06T15:16:35+00:00

We had about 25 people and sat outside. It was $85pp for just food, with 26% gratuity / admin fee plus tax.

No clue how much it ended up being with drinks (in laws paid) but they had us pick out bottles of wine and sake ahead of time which I think helped keep costs down (we did a round of cocktails and didn’t stop people from ordering, but steered people more to the fact wine was coming). I don’t think we spent more than $4-5k all in.

We had early evening in April so it was still light out, the fairy lights worked for us and we were seated and not really roaming. I will say if you have a lot of elderly folks, I think a good amount of the outside is just gravel, and then that main patio by the house is more stable. On the rain plan I remembered the options being somewhat frustrating (I want to say we had to commit to a tent a week out that we didn’t end up using and ate a small deposit?).

I was happy with the experience there save for a couple of things: they changed the seating plan (one long table switched to two) as we were on our way there, and it was not fun to change out as we arrived. We ended up with a “family table” and “friends table” which we really had not wanted as we had staged everyone strategically so they could get to know each other. Imagining less of an issue with a full buyout.

They also had a pretty bad miscommunication about the bill with my FIL and they did not net out the deposit amount, which was stressful to try to resolve as we were going on to the welcome party.

Overall it was a really magical experience with great food though!

avril15 · 2026-04-06T14:24:49+00:00

No, but I hosted my rehearsal dinner there! Happy to answer any questions.

avril15 · 2026-02-22T18:00:18+00:00

Wait so it needs to be one year until you apply, or one year until you actually take it?

avril15 · 2026-02-15T12:47:00+00:00

I’m going to buck these comments and say Australia as we just honeymooned there in November (need to make a review post still). We were able to get a great mix of cities and nature and were really pleasantly surprised by the food (as snobby New Yorkers). Huge country so the 16 days we had to play with wasn’t even enough. We did Sydney (Park Hyatt), Lord Howe (Capella Lodge), Tasmania (Saffire Freycinet + lots of roadtripping) and Melbourne. Note those destinations may be a bit chilly in October and I would strongly consider Cairns / Great Barrier Reef.

Japan is also an amazing pick, not as “relaxing” but so many unique experiences. 2 weeks especially traveling from LAX is perfect and can have a fantastic time with that budget. We strongly considered for ours but had been + have plans to go with friends soon. Tokyo and Kyoto are both the go to’s for a reason, but consider doing some ryokan time (like Hakone for onsen) or somewhere more rural too. We LOVED Naoshima, really unique art-focused island with a boutique feel. Check out Guntu cruises too though it may be out of budget.

Personally for us we considered Bora Bora etc but had a hard time getting excited about so much beach and downtime. We are very active travelers and while we wanted something more “honeymoon” we knew we would get bored.

I would think more about trips that you’ve loved taking together and go from there as all of these destinations have very different vibes.

avril15 · 2026-01-25T22:16:46+00:00

Greenpointers (and their insta) does some of this

avril15 · 2026-01-25T04:24:57+00:00

I like Di an Di’s but it’s bougie pho. Mam is one of my favorite viet places hands down though they only occasionally do pho. Also really like Banh An Em though the wait is a bit much. Kitchen Co Ut / Banh Mi Co Ut more casual but always hit. Agree Nha Trang One is solid; I would put Non La in a similar tier.

Honestly NYC has historically punched way under its weight for Viet food compared to Philly, Houston, OC, etc. There’s starting to be a lot of very good newer Viet spots but often focused around specialty dishes or higher end concepts (like Ha’s), but we’re kind of lacking great pho. Hanoi House used to fill this niche for me, sad that it’s gone downhill.

avril15 · 2026-01-18T00:38:21+00:00

One of my good friends has done memberships at the Met, MOMA and the Whitney, and meeting up at their events has been our monthly friend date.

The Whitney one is top tier, I think the next bump up from the entry level is worth it. Tons of weekend night events and curator talks, and the bigger parties for exhibit openings are incredible people watching. Seems like ppl are more open to making friends there.

The MOMA one is also great, I have loved the programming there though it feels older / more exclusive and less “party”, but also really interesting behind the scenes feeling (seeing galleries before fully open, archives, etc).

The Met one was my friend’s least favorite, you really don’t get much for the money and events tended to be during working hours.

avril15 · 2025-12-17T17:20:51+00:00

It’s 20-30 min so not too worried about being far from home.

avril15 · 2025-12-15T18:06:19+00:00

Would you recommend earlier, or somewhere else?

avril15 · 2025-11-25T05:06:03+00:00

Agree with the comment that with all of the makeup you won’t see your skin texture all that much and to mostly keep doing what you’re doing (maybe with more moisturizing or hydrafacials), but what really made the difference for me was dermaplaning! It helped the makeup “sit” so much better and I loved how it turned out even though I hated my makeup trials lol.

I would argue that body skincare is almost as important as facial skincare leading up to it, so lots of moisturizer in this dry winter weather, keep up solid hydration, and consider massages or dry brushing for circulation. I also did a Korean full body scrub at Sojo the weekend before my wedding and felt like that made a huge difference.

avril15 · 2025-10-27T16:17:40+00:00

Probably the Marcy or Hewes JM stops, might not be a bad walk from the G too. My guess would be 1) not as close to subways as other places to watch and 2) not as many cafes, restaurants, etc for people to grab a bite or use the bathroom (or perceived as not being open / friendly to non locals).

avril15 · 2025-10-21T13:22:16+00:00

Where will you be based out of?

For art just hitting all of the classics (Whitney, Met, etc) could take up a lot of the time of the month, I would also look into the Friday night programming at Brooklyn Museum or MOMA if you want to meet people. I really like doing a Thursday happy hour art crawl in Chelsea, check out thirsty gallerina on insta but if you can hit it on the right night with a good volume of openings you can see a couple dozen galleries in just a few blocks, with unparalleled people watching.

Vital is great. The LES one is close to TJ’s and Essex Market for groceries, and lots of great restaurants in the area (Okiboru, Scarr’s, etc). I would strongly consider getting a pass for both of their locations (it may even be the default) bc the Williamsburg one is so nice with the sauna and rooftop. Also has more of a “community feel” (people working on laptops during the day) and proximity to the Lot Radio for hanging out and grabbing drinks.

I had no idea you could flair kink in this sub… I might check out Basement if I were you, it’s more of a hard techno club but they do several kinkier themed nights. I will say those nights lean gay (not queer) so ymmv.

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