Tribeca Hotel FiDi

Victoria Blamey Distinguishes Herself at Mena | The New Yorker

"At her new restaurant, Mena, in a semi-hidden corner of an unassuming Tribeca hotel, she is serving some of the best seafood I’ve ever encountered: a trio of plump, creamy Crowes Pasture oysters topped with a seaweed gremolata (shiso, fermented white peppercorns, and cochayuyo) that intensified the oysters’ brininess; a meaty, sparkly-skinned sardine, filleted and draped over mayo-dressed boiled potato that tasted as if it had swum straight from Tokyo; a crackly-skinned Boston mackerel with grilled ramps and garlic-chive flowers that was deliciously fatty in a way that evoked pork; and fruits of the sea hidden in a cross-sectioned Baby Gem lettuce, with surprise pops of whitefish roe. Even dessert leaned into the sea: kelp-infused cream folded into an airy chocolate ganache with kelp butter and Chilean hazelnuts, capped with a milk-and-sugar foam. A loamy morcilla, served over sourdough fried in pheasant fat beneath a foam of Upstate Abundance potato and crowned with three concave cipollini petals holding a dark jus au poivre, was the only substantial non-pescatarian item I encountered. Small, deceptively simple plates—like crunchy fried king-trumpet mushrooms dusted in vadouvan atop Spanish lentils cooked in a Donko-shiitake ragout—felt humble and down to earth; Blamey herself, in a T-shirt and apron, expedites and garnishes dishes at the pass. Drinks include seasonal cocktails (a pisco with yuzu and passion fruit), a perfumed fermented jasmine-green tea from Unified Ferments, and a single “Something Mena”: a chicha–style drink made from quince and wild rose hips that is sweet on the nose, woodsy on the palate, and has an intense, almost gasoline-like bitterness that grew on me. The prix fixe is $125 for three small courses plus dessert (à la carte $18–$51; a bowl of locro with snow crab and razor clam can be $51)." - Hannah Goldfield