Two New Restaurants Have Perfected the Seafood Tower
There’s something about seafood towers that has never sat right: They’re supposedly portioned for groups, but who the hell actually wants to share one?
Raw seafood on crushed ice is great in theory, but because each item comes in different quantities — four shrimp, one lobster, a dozen oysters — sharing them ends up feeling a bit like playing a game of Catan. (“Two mussels for one prawn, anyone?“) That’s just the start of the punishment. Wait until you see the bill.
At least two new restaurants seem to have figured this out. Strange Delight in Fort Greene and Penny in the East Village sell seafood towers portioned “for one.” They aren’t colossal plateaus. In fact, one of them isn’t even a tower. But one strength of their size is that they cost a lot less — about as much as a weekly MetroCard.
The tower at Strange Delight started, like many great ideas, with an iMessage. Anoop Pillarisetti, one of the restaurant’s owners, wanted a luxe option for solo diners. “Can we do tower service for 1 @ $35?” he texted his business partner Ham El-Waylly. “Do we have a way to make that work?”
They did. The seafood tower is one story tall. It includes: oysters, shrimp, a bite of raw seafood, smoked fish dip, and because this is a restaurant inspired by New Orleans, shrimp remoulade. If that was all, the price — $35 — would be more than justified. It also comes with fried saltine crackers, bread, and free dessert.
A few weeks later, I thought I was seeing double when I sat down at Penny and saw another seafood platter for loners. The raw bar, located above the East Village restaurant Claud, and run by the same owners, is tailored to walk-in customers: There are very few reservations available, and the long bar top is ideal for individuals or pairs. So, a spread of seafood that someone could eat on their own with reasonable ease made sense.
Penny serves a seafood box, not a tower, for $36. The metal pan looks like it could be used to make brownies, but when it’s filled with crushed ice, oysters, clams, pickled mussels, and scallops, it feels more like a treasure chest. The star is the plump red shrimp, which come from Argentina: One of the owners, Joshua Pinsky, tested almost a dozen cocktail sauce recipes until he found one worthy of them.
Both Strange Delight and Penny offer the option to upgrade your towers with more items — squid salad, jammy eggs, and caviar — or for more people. Once you’ve had one all to yourself, I guarantee it won’t cross your mind. The portions are just right, and the company is perfect.
