April Bloomfield’s endeavor in fish, The John Dory, has all the kitschy funk that make The Spotted Pig and The Rusty Knot perennial go-tos. Shell mirrors, giant fish tanks, and fish etchings, drawings, and wall paintings everywhere you look situate the restaurant more in Florida than along the pubescent restaurant row of Tenth Avenue. It also has a range of lighter cuisine for those who don’t care for the belly busting burgers at Spotted and a reservationist for those uninterested in wading around an understaffed, over-crowded amateur hour at The Knot.
At The John Dory, patrons can opt to sit at tables or along the oyster bar, which looks into the slender open kitchen where Bloomfield and her team perform their maritime magic. I suggest this observation deck, which will help you hone in on your order. A raw bar, a crudo selection, and a full list of tantalizing appetizers fight to be your first taste. We opted for the kampachi with ginger crudo—an intricate dish of three sashimi slices topped with red onions, ginger, and crumpled nori bits. We selected the langoustine salad, which came with fennel and an ample brush stroke of saffron aioli. This was one of my favorites, though I wish the portion was a little larger. The most decadent of appetizers was the oyster pan roast—a little pot of cream dredged oysters accompanied by a long crostini covered in a thick layer of butter that had been enhanced withuni. We paired it with the wild mushroom salad, whichwas the first amply-sized dish and came topped with mâche and slivers of Parmesan.
We split the pan-roasted cod. The fish was cooked to flakey, buttery perfection. It rested on mantecato, a sort of brandade-esque potato-salted fish mash. Atop the fish was a pile of artichoke chips—maybe potatoes that had been fried in an artichoke infused oil—and a roasted chile of which we ate a little with each bite of fish. We had a side of the fall caponata, a spectacular rendition of the classic. This one was a sweet and tangy mix of sunchokes, cipollini onions, sultanas, and pine nuts.
Sex Pistols, Nirvana, and Radiohead were heavily featured on the soundtrack. It was an added bonus for us, but seemed a little out of place based on the splurge-level prices. To save a little, skip dessert—the only subpar aspect of the evening—it’s not the point anyway.
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