For too long now, your NYC seafood options have been limited to omakase sushi, fried tilefish, peekytoe
crab, diver scallops, Island Creek oysters, razor clams, monkfish, blackened catfish, smoked sardines,
octopus, shrimp and grits, sturgeon, salmon roe and dozens more.
Well, those dark days are over.
Because welcome Wisefish Poké, a quick lunch stop-off for some delicious fresh raw fish in a bowl with
other things, open today in Chelsea.
For the uninitiated, poké is sushi’s more laid-back Hawaiian cousin. You can get one version of it in
small-plate form at Noreetuh, and Seamore’s kind of has it, but this is the first full-fledged effort to bring it to town. Basically, it’s chunks of ahi tuna, salmon or
tofu, in a bowl, with things like rice or zucchini noodles, hijiki, wasabi shoyu, sesame seeds, etc. Not to
be reductive, but it’s the Sweetgreen of raw fish.
The place decidedly doesn’t look like one (slideshow here) that
would mesh with the post-blizzard, dirty-slush hellscape we currently live in. Which, we can all agree, is a
good thing. It’s blond wood and pastel steel chairs and a single table embedded with succulents.
