Claire’s is a vegetarian restaurant in downtown New Haven next to Yale campus. It’s a cafe style restaurant, you order and pay at the counter and they’ll bring you your food. The food is pretty good – it’s got a homey feeling to it. I wouldn’t say it’s outstanding, but the pricing is decent.

I don’t really come here for the food, however, because Claire’s makes the best cake in New Haven! :-) Yes, just go ahead and skip the food and try the CAKE. Their signature is the Lithuanian Coffee Cake, but I’ve also had the carrot cake which is amazing. If you like dense, rich cakes you’ve got to try it. A lot of on campus organizations order Claire’s cake and lure people to events by advertising that they’ve got some.

I’d probably give Claire’s a 3 star for overall atmosphere and the other food, but for the cake I give it a 5, so that averages to a 4 :-)

How To Cook a Wolf is a unique culinary experience. There’s been a lot of buzz about this restaurant lately and I’d heard several of my friends talking about it. So we went on a Tuesday evening to check it out. We knew there would be a line as there always is, so we put our name down and went to a bar next door to get drinks and wait. We were seated just over an hour later – they’ll call your cell phone when they’re ready which is nice.

The interior is warm and intimate. Very close quarters and the kitchen is right in front of you as you walk in the door. You really feel like you’re getting a very unique meal with great attention to detail by the chefs. All the dishes we had were delicious and the service was excellent. We also had a nice bottle of Italian wine to go with our meal.

Between 5 people, we ordered 2 pasta dishes and 4 appetizers as well as some bread which was just about right.

Expect to wait if you want to try this place! Get there early, put your name down. No reservations, but you won’t regret it! I’ll be back for more.

Nijo is a fun sushi restaurant in downtown Seattle that’s got a great variety of sushi rolls to try out. I always enjoying seeing a long list of funky rolls. They’ve even got one “flaming” roll here where they drizzle it in Bacardi 151 and light it on fire :-)

Good restaurant atmosphere inside, with a younger crowd inside. The food isn’t cheap, but your best bet is probably the sushi rolls if you want to get full. I ordered some sashimi and one order only came with 3 pieces. The quality was very good, but not very much for the price.

Lots more stuff to try at this restaurant so I’ll be back to try out some of their more creative dishes!

Zinc is a Modern American restaurant in downtown New Haven. New Haven isn’t exactly known for it’s culinary cuisine, so this restaurant was a pleasant surprise for me. I was invited to go here – else I probably wouldn’t have known about it.

The interior is elegant and there seemed to be a lot of business types and people in their 30s and 40s in the restaurant.

The food was excellent – I had a hard time deciding from several great dishes. Everyone in the party enjoyed their food, and I have to say the service was definitely better than average. They had a good choice of wines and desserts as well.

Overall, a classy place to have a nice dinner in New Haven. Many companies recruiting on campus have business dinners here, so that’s always a good sign!

This is a great find in Chinatown. This is a Taiwanese restaurant with a great variety of tasty dishes to sample. The best part is how cheap it is, and you’re served pretty quickly. For two of us at lunch we ate for $15 and had leftovers to take home. Their menu was pretty big so I want to come back and try some more things, but everything I had was very good.

Lots of locals eating here – you can tell from the atmosphere inside. The restaurant does good business. Check this place out if you’re looking for somewhere to eat in Boston Chinatown.

I came here for brunch with a friend. This place was bustling on a Sunday morning – with lots of students and other people wandering around the area. We had trouble getting a seat so ended up sitting downstairs in the main restaurant but were still able to order from the cafe upstairs. The cafe could use some more seats as it’s quite small. However the food was very good – and reasonably priced. We had the breakfast food which includes all the standards as well as crepes and belgian waffles.

This is a fun place to come with friends for some brunch and it’s right next to Harvard campus. They’ve also got a good looking lunch menu which I’d like to come back and try.

Sushi Palace is awesome! It’s a small unassuming restaurant in Hamden. You’d probably drive by it without noticing it. I kept hearing about this place from various people at school who said it’s the best sushi place around for the best value. The sushi places around here tend to be overpriced, but this one you’re guaranteed to get your value especially if you go for lunch or a weekday dinner when the prices are lower.

They’ve got a great variety of side dishes, meat, tempura, and of course sushi and yes, sashimi! A lot of places don’t do sashimi cause that’s pretty much the most expensive thing at a buffet. The quality of the fish was good and the food came fast. They even had ice cream.

I’ll definitely be back here for more!

The only reason why I ended up eating here was because all the other restaurants in the area were full! This place is kind of panasian. The service was decent – but overall there’s nothing that would really want to make me come back in here since there are better options in the area for cheap Asian food.

One plus is that this place is never crowded and they have a large menu – you can pick from Vietnamese or Thai. And it’s on the cheaper side compared to a few of the other Thai restaurants in the area.

Looking for a good place to grab some lunch? Atticus is probably one of the better places in town for some good sandwich, salad, and soups. They make their own bread here which is sold in the local grocery stores. You can buy the bread by the loaf if you want one to go. Otherwise, get one of their sandwiches which are really good. I believe they make their own soups too.

Everything here is fresh and homemade which is great. This place is also a bookstore.

Cheap, fast, clean. New Haven doesn’t have many authentic Asian places but if you want to find one – this is probably going to be it. I’d been going to Ivy Noodle down the street which has a lot of students in there – but then a friend told me about this place. I walked in and it was all Chinese people. That was the 1st good sign. A large menu and everything is between $4 and $12 with most things being around the $6 range. You’ll get a lot of food for cheap. The restaurant is well lit and really clean for a Chinese place.

I give it 5 stars because this is the best you’re going to get for Chinese food in New Haven – which isn’t really saying much.