After a 7 hour flight and navigating our way from JFK to our midtown Manhattan hotel, we need a bite to eat - mostly to keep us up to a normal hour to avoid horrendous jet lag. Alasdair has found Planta Queen, a very short walk from the hotel, which is an all-vegan Japanese restaurant (a general New York/American theme: restaurants tend to be all or nothing on this, either fully plant-based or with minimal adjustments possible, as opposed to the UK’s pretty consistent multiple options in any restaurant). It is also Maki Monday (a decidedlt different concept to Maccies Mondays at work in the old days), with $9 maki rolls all round. I go for the Hawaiian, with pineapple and avocado, served with a mango aioli. I think I prefer Alasdair’s torched and pressed avocado rolls with a miso truffle glaze. The bao slider of crispy fake chicken is pretty good, but the star of the show is the 1000 layer crispy potato, with sour cream and caviar (take the quotation marks around the above as read). Both too full and too tired for a dessert, we take our leave to finally crash.