Going to Bar Tonno as a fish must be like going to heaven. The care and attention paid to each small plate of deliciously fresh seafood (raw style, of course) is reminiscent of an elaborate day spa where your every need, from water with lemon to furry slippers is met upon demand. At this seafood spa graveyard (for though the food is raw it is most certainly dead) pieces of sliced fluke come alive beneath a pulverized pepper dashed with citrus. Greasy shards of kanpachi (baby yellow tail) glisten under the blue lights lining the 22 seat bar that stretches from the door of the restaurant to the bathroom door in the rear.
Exploring his crudo side, Chef Scott Conant of L'impero fame has teamed up with a sushi chef to offer plates of tuna with Hawaiian sea salt, orata with baby chanterelles and sardines cured in olive oil, to adventurous, but probably not very hungry, eaters. With only bar seats, Bar Tonno exists to feed you but not necessarily fill you. One could get drunk very easily with only 3 measly foccacia friends to absorb whatever wine you might choose from the bottles lining the bar from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
Two eerie eyes stared at me from one bottle as we let briny Barrow Point oysters with cacciucco gelle slide down our throats. Alaskan spot prawns were rather gummy, but the clam and scallion accompaniment saved this combination.
There is no dessert menu but our waiter, who was able to maneuver our service quite well behind the narrow bar, offered us an after dinner drink of fresh squeezed green apple juice with ginger, topped off with a little bubbly. A mix between a mimosa and a bloody mary, a micro green garnish would have completed this energizing ending to our meal.
Though all the stools at the bar are equal, aim to get one of the six seats behind the beaded curtain in the back where you can see your food get the pampering it deserves.
Bar Tonno
17 Cleveland Place
(212) 966 7334
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