05.24.08
Review of Lure Fishbar, Sunday May 2008
142 Mercer St. & Prince St., 212-431-7676
Great for: sushi, interesting ’80s music, a lovely quiet place to relax after SoHo shopping
I was so busy last week with my friends, Sunday was the first night I could have a date. I was at Balthazar Thursday night with my friend S and this German guy D basically told me I was gorgeous and please would I have dinner with him before he went back to Germany. I told him he could have Sunday. I calculated from his stories that D must be over twice my age, but it was nothing serious, just a good way to dip my toe in the water. The Ex-Boyfriend and I spent so much time together, I almost forgot how dating works.
D asked me to meet him at Balthazar in honor of our initial acquaintance. He didn’t seem to understand that you must make reservations in this town. I figured 9pm on a Sunday wouldn’t be too bad, but I was very wrong. When I walked in at 9:05 he hadn’t even thought to put his name down with the hostess, as I found out after wasting another 20 minutes sipping my cocktail. Long story short, at 9:30 the wait was 1.5 hours. I firmly suggested we go somewhere else. Which is how we ended up at Lure just in time to order before the kitchen closed at 10.
D loves seafood, so we got the medium plateau from the raw bar, consisting of 6 oysters, 4 shrimps, 5 clams, 2 Jonah crab claws (instead of the stone crab claws they’d run out of) and seafood salad for $58. It was good. The shellfish were not as tender as they could be but overall it was pretty decent. The salad in the center was ceviche-sour. The cocktail and mustard sauces were tasty. I liked the yellowtail carpaccio with apple cubes, alfalfa (?) and green pepper cubes much more. It was bizarrely good. I would never think to combine those things and I am glad someone else did.
The yellowtail jalapeño roll with cucumber and sriracha was great, with yellowtail inside and on top. We found it spicy and delicious. The Lure house roll was somehow even better. It was shrimp tempura with cucumber and lettuce topped by creamy soft spicy tuna drizzled with a plum sauce-type dressing. I loved the contrast of crispy shrimp and melty fish. D taught me a Dutch word to describe the rolls, lecker. He explained its meaning as lip-smackingly yummy. I assume it has something to do with the English word lechery, or maybe that was just the way he was licking his lips saying it.
I was surprised at how filling those four things were. I was afraid we’d need more food – I’m usually always hungry. To avoid a case of the midnight munchies, we shared the cheesecake with pineapple ice cream and artistically arranged pineapple and orange chunks around it. It was an interesting combo that totally worked. The cheesecake was fluffy and creamy and I liked the chewy crust.
Our waitress was very nice and helpful, giving us her informed and correct opinion about the amount of food we got. The busboy ignored our empty water glasses, though. The odd ’80s rock they played was jarring to me at first, but then kind of a nice change from the ubiquitous Pink Martini and chill lounge music they play everywhere. Apparently Owen Wilson liked it too – he walked in a little after 10 and asked them to replay the song that was on at the moment. I think he was getting takeout or something.
Celebrity gawking aside, I was pleasantly surprised at the inventiveness and excellence of the sushi. It’s ironic that the raw bar fell short of the (also raw) sushi bar. In any case, it’s in a great location, and is if anything even better than I remember from my last visit a few years ago.
[It was an all right date. I started not liking him so much towards the end.]
Rating: 7.5 / 10
Our cost: $160 (teetotaling)
Noise level: very quiet
Chance of walking in: medium.
