Gift From the Sea
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Grilled fish was always one of the best options at Sip Sak, though it has been sadly marginalized on the menu at Orhan Yegen’s Midtown Turkish café. So it’s good to see it come into its own at Mr. Yegen’s new restaurant, Sea Salt, which serves grilled fish to the exclusion of almost anything else.
Photos of fishing scenes decorate the dimly lit space, which is patrolled by an exuberantly friendly but somewhat amateurish staff, as well as the chef-owner himself. The first step in a meal at Sea Salt is to be escorted by a server to the fish counter in the back, which is done up like a retail fish shop. The daily catch gleams on ice as the server describes it fish by fish: small silvery anchovies, giant striped bass, rosy plate-size snappers, and fat little porgies. Point to one, and it’s yours.
The chef grills modest-size fish whose size suits them for a generous single serving. But the giant four-person bass and salmon get the restaurant’s namesake treatment. First encased in a beautiful shell of salt and baked; then, at tableside, the dramatic white sculpture, doused in brandy, is set aflame, and cracked open to reveal a juicy fish dinner. The salt crust keeps the flesh moist and subtly flavors it at the same time.
Fish from the grill arrive whole, completely recognizable as the specimen you picked off the ice, but piping hot and fragrant, and considerably subdued. The prices of the fish vary by species and weight, with an individual portion — typically a mammoth dose of fish — averaging in the low $20s. The striped bass has fine savory flavor, with smooth flesh that comes apart in large, tender flakes under the fork. Its grilled skin tastes briny and fresh. The snappers, pink or red, are pleasingly tropical in appearance, with the needly little teeth that give them their name prominently displayed. Their meat is finely flaky, with a sweet taste reminiscent of the crustaceans they eat. Much of the fish is flown in — the servers will eagerly describe each specimen’s origin — but nothing lacks in freshness.
Starters, like the rest of the menu, hew close to the sea: clams or oysters, raw or fried ($9.50 for half a dozen), fried calamari ($9.50), and fresh fish sticks ($8.50) with golden exteriors and fluffy, flavorful middles. Slender, delicate Spanish anchovies can be flour-dredged and fried to order ($12.50), and arrive in a big heap of piping-hot, head-on fishes with just lemon juice for seasoning. You can spot the pretend seafood devotees by the pile of little heads they leave behind on their plates, as authentic aficionados enjoy the anchovies whole, in a single bite, with their fingers. The same flavorful fish can be had baked and served cold in a vinegar dressing ($9.50), where the cooked bones give it a faint, delectable crunch. Smoked mackerel ($9.50) is salty and rich, complemented only by slivers of raw red onion, whose clean, sharp bite pairs perfectly with the oily fish.
The house version of taramosalata is luxurious, a pale-pink setting of roe in thick cream. It comes topped with orange salmon eggs as part of a starter platter of spreads ($12.50) that also includes earthy, funky fava puree and a mix of yogurt and cooked spinach that’s almost more a salad than a spread.
A daily pasta special ($14.50) incorporates seafood, of course: When I tried it, the fresh house-made fettuccine was a little undercooked, but its cream sauce, laden with tiny scallop morsels and big red lumps of lobster meat, made up for that.
Scallops, salmon, or shrimps can be had baked in a thin tomato sauce, accompanied by savory shiitake mushrooms and plenty of garlic. The flavor is good but the scallops I tried were a little rubbery. At Sea Salt, the grill is seafood’s best friend. For dessert, there’s a fresh fruit platter, in considerate observance of how stuffed customers are likely to be after an enormous helping of fish; or a cool glass of creamy, mild almond pudding. Sea Salt pours a few Turkish wines, which are bargain priced but otherwise not particularly noteworthy, and plenty of better wines from other countries, as well as Turkey’s Efes lager.
Whole grilled fish is not a rarity in this town, and Mr. Yegen’s approach isn’t unique, but it’s good to have a high-water mark up to which one can hold other fish for comparison. Sea Salt provides that.
Sea Salt (99 Second Ave., between 5th and 6th streets, 212-979-5400).