Woot! Two posts in one week. Take that, longstanding goal. (Enter roundhouse kick of joy, Chuck Norris style)!
So, chronologically in my culinary experiences, this actually came after my trip to Gramercy Tavern, but I forgot about it in the face of the Gramercy's food coma, so here we are.
Let's start with the thousand foot view: (there is prossibly a google map of this somewhere)
Address: 633 3rd Ave (at 40th street) NY, NY
Cuisine: Upscale Seafood / Raw Bar
Meal eaten here: Dinner
Bar: You bet your whiskey sour
Have matchbooks: the pyro in me rejoiced
And for the specifics:
We (James and I) arrived on Friday night around 8, prime restaurant time in the city, but they sat us right away, which was, frankly, a pretty pleasant surprise. We both ordered drinks (James was classy and got white wine, while I was a liquor whore and ordered this concoction called the Twilight martini), and these were served pretty quickly alongside some bread and sesame seed crackers. James' wine was lovely, while my drink was pretty bitter and really strong (I'm a lightweight at best, but this thing had me seeing stars. Talk about a cheap date.). All I can say is, with the name and the description, I was expecting something tangy-sweet, but what I got was cold and clammy. Guess they're Team Edward.
Because James had once told me he had tried and loved them, and because I'm trying this thing where I try a new food as often as I can (but not if there's duck on the menu, or meatballs...mmm meatballs), and because it was an oyster bar, we order raw (wait for it) no, not oysters...raw clams. There were two kinds (one was sort of little and slimey, and the other was much bigger, and slimier) and they came with a cocktail sauce and horseradish, as well as an obligatory lemon. I liked both, but the larger one was a little imposing for a first timer, so
I had to cut them in half, which is, of course, uncouth (good thing F Scott Fitzgerald wasn't in the room), but I liked them nonetheless.
For our meals, I had the salmon on these scht-(some word, probably German) bits which were basically in-between gnocchi and pasta, but thinner and stringier with spinach, and James got linguine in clam sauce. James' dish won hands down: delicious, light sauce, linguine was properly cooked, clams were cooked with a white wine sauce and weren't chewy, and overall it was a thumbs up. My salmon was well cooked, but nothing, I thought, to write home about. The sfdiofrhw bed that it was on was all right, but I would have preferred something less mushy, like rice, maybe, on the side.
We didn't order dessert (woe!), so I can't comment on that, but there was someone at the table next to us who I think was a famous sports coach of some kind (mostly because people kept coming up to him and being like coach this and coach that. Also, he was a older and with a leggy blonde half his age. But James had his back to him and I'm not good at following sports so, I guess, don't take my word for it).
Overall impression was that it was a nice place, thought I wasn't blown away by anyting we had (thats not to say it was bad; I'm just hard to impress food wise bc half my family could be on Iron Chef).. The basics (linguine w clam sauce and wine) were good, while anything a bit more complicated (my drink, salmon strehj stuff) were just all right. The quality of the raw fish was nice, but I wasn't blown away by anything--maybe we should have ordered something different, but I think fish at an oyster bar should have been a sure bet. Maybe they're better at brunch (there was a big sign in the window advertising a bottomless brunch that looked really quite good), but for my money, Lure in Soho is still my favorite raw bar (and burger place--go figure) in the city. That said, the atmosphere was nice, and made for a good date night. Plus, they did have matchbooks.
Final Verdict:
** and a half out of *****
Price:
$$ out of $$$
I'd go again:
If Lure was closed, or Sinigual across the street had a wait.
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