Canada’s TableTop Group entered the New York market with a grand space named Oceans.
There is a long tradition of seafood restaurants of grand size, especially in the U.S. and even more so in New York, starting with the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant and extending to Lundy’s of Brooklyn and Louie’s in Port Washington. The newest, and certainly the sleekest, is Oceans, which is run by Canada’s Toptable Group whose restaurants in the north country include the Blue Water Café, Elisa and CinCin in Vancouver, and Araxi in Whistler.
Dramatic design with elegant polish is their company signature, and Oceans (which is across the street from Union Square Café) is exemplary, with tall ceilings and swooping arches, white pillars and widely separated tables, with a sweeping long bar and lounge. It is a handsome place and one that tends to attract a well-dressed crowd, not least a sizeable clientele of women dining with friends.
The bar has the swank of a nightclub lounge.
You’ll be cordially greeted by equally attractive hostesses, and since the main dining room can be loud, your best bet would be to get a corner table or one to the rear.
Chef Andy Kitko has long experience in seafood cuisine including Estiatorios Milos.
Chef Andy Kitko has a solid career working with some of the best French chefs, including Sylvan Portay at San Francisco’s Ritz Carlton Hotel and later Daniel Boulud at Café Boulud, as well as at the nearby Italian-Japanese extravaganza, Aqua, before becoming Executive Chef at the Greek seafood restaurant Estiatorio Milos. He has, therefore, obviously learned that the less a cook does to impeccable seafood, the better.
The sizeable menu begins with caviar (though it does not say where it’s farmed), and then raw and chilled seafood like a mixed ceviche ($23); “tsunami,” which is quickly torched hamachi with a jalapeno ponzu ($23); and excellent tuna tartare ($32) with pine nuts, Asian pear, avocado and radish, along with rolls ($17-$25).
The seafood tower is featured in one, two or three tiers.
There is then a nigiri/sashimi section, with pieces $9-$15, and, as necessary at every big seafood emporium, a tower of cold seafood ($195) set on three tiers and piled with oysters and two kinds of tuna, jumbo shrimp, mussels, clams, calamari peekytoe crab, Alaskan king crab and lobster. Two tiers runs $125, one runs $80.
Although listed as a small plate, the charred Spanish octopus ($32) comes with tender gigante beans and onion is enough for two, and the substantial Maryland crab cake ($29) contains true jumbo lump (which these days in running about $55 a pound in a seafood store).
The non-seafood CASARECCE is a sumptuous pasta dish,
The braised lamb casarecce with lemon breadcrumbs and ricotta ($30 or $45) will win no points for economy, but it’s a good , robust pasta.
You may well want to go with the simplest grilled preparation from the “fresh fish market” on view, which on any given day might include branzino, turbot, dorade red snapper and black bass.
The large crab cake is full of jumbo lump crab.
The more involved items include Alaskan black cod with a sake glaze, bok choy, edamame and shiitakes ($52) or a very good Nova Scotia halibut with flavor all its own ($48) that comes with a bright edamame salsa, romesco cauliflower and, for bite, grain mustard.
There are five meat dishes, and the dry-aged bone-in New York strip with a shallot herb sauce ($68) was of fine texture and minerality. The Parisian friend with whom I dined scarfed it up and mopped up the sauce with bread, along with well-rendered frites.
Pure white, tender halibut comes with florets of cauliflower and a rich reduction of juices.
Desserts list an English banoffee trifle ($16) with banana custard and toffee sauce you don’t often see and warm doughnuts with chocolate and oozy dulce de leche ($15) that are difficult to refuse.
There are about 20 wines by the glass, reserve bottlings in three- or five-ounce pours, along with a dozen sakes. The rest of the list is 50 pages long, strong in every category, so I’d advise perusing it on Oceans’ website before you go rather than ignore your friends for half hour at the table. There is a good number of wines under $100 and mark-ups are all over the place, some 100$ some 200%. As impressive as the red wine list is, I’m surprised it is as deep, given this is a seafood restaurant. Who’s ordering a $1,700 Ornellaia 2018?
As I noted recently, size in a restaurant once meant a kind of conveyor belt attitude with pre-cooking on much that goes out of the kitchen. But the availability of great seafood product these days––although at a high price–– means that Kiko has only to make sure everything is to his liking and pass on his focus on quality and timing to his staff. Oceans is a swanky place, romantic in its grandiosity, but what matters is the what’s on the plate, night after night.
OCEANS
233 Park Avenue South
212-209-1054
Open nightly
