Still Shipshape
Oceana Celebrates Fifteen Years
by John Mariani

Has it really been fifteen years since Oceana opened? I'd venture eight, maybe ten, but fifteen? Well, it certainly goes to prove the restaurant's success under the ownership of the Livanos family, which also owns Molyvos and Abboccato on the west side, and several restaurants in Westchester County and Connecticut, and their long-time partner-manager Paul McLaughlin. While the owners may have tweaked the premises and décor, a two-floor affair done in marine colors with some beautiful seaside murals in the dining room, over the years, it has remained pretty much the same, for its style and ambiance need no updating. Oceana is still one of the best-looking restaurants in Manhattan.

Tablesettings are impeccable, lighting civilized, conversation level perfect. The wine list has been compiled over the years to match the menus here, and it is one of the finest in New York, with 25,000 bottles, 1,100 selections, 28 by the glass, and several impressive verticals like the "Kistler Collection." Upstairs is a popular banquet room.

In all those years Oceana has only had three chefs: the first, Rick Moonen, set the restaurant on an even keel with food that was imaginative but always true to the species of seafood being prepared. Moonen moved onto open rm seafood in Las Vegas. His successor at Oceana was very talented but liked to play tricks with his ingredients, using sometimes dissonant counterpoints, at other times lavishing fish with sauces that obliterated its natural flavor. Now comes a new toque, Ben Pollinger, a veteran of Lespinasse, Tabla, and Union Square Café, three distinctive venues that give him a wide range of cooking styles and seasonings, which he admirably applies with restraint at Oceana. Allow me a nautical turn of phrase to say Pollinger has righted the ship. He is joined by pastry chef Jansen Chan, recently of Alain Ducasse.

Pollinger's is a light touch–ideal with seafood and amply displayed in dishes like his Taylor Bay scallop ceviche with citrus, apple and cucumber, all left to their natural states. Crab came with artichoke, favas, a little basil and pancetta bacon, and a stinging nettle soup as bright as spring itself was laced with yogurt panna cotta and a little sorrel, with fresh Gulf shrimp. Cuttlefish risotto, so often a muddy, viscous, fishy mess, is here creamy, slightly briny and beautifully textured, with fiddlehead ferns and spring onions.

Potato gnocchi with asparagus, morels and pecorino cheese was fine, if nothing thrilling, but a ragoût of periwinkles with wine and bacon, accompanied by foie gras and roasted garlic focaccia bread worked very well, because periwinkles can use some help. Our main courses included an almond-crusted snapper with green and wax beans, wild mushrooms and a seaweed broth, and pan-roasted cod came with Manila clams, fingerling potatoes, baby mustard greens and the pleasant salty, hot bite of chorizo sausage. Best of all was taro-wrapped dorade with baby bok choy, long beans, peanuts, basmati rice and a coconut-cilantro curry. This last dish may have strayed into Indian-Indonesian waters but it was impeccably handled and shows that Pollinger paid rapt attention to Floyd Cardoz's cooking at Tabla.

For dessert there was ricotta mousse–very light–with lychee and a ginger salad, and a sumptuous chocolate custard brownie with roasted cinnamon ice cream and espresso granita, as well as a homey warm vanilla cake with grapefruit and Earl Grey tea ice cream. I didn't think a black pepper meringue did anything for an otherwise deeply flavorful rhubarb semolina tart.

Everything Pollinger and Chan made seemed to be based on common sense coupled with an innate sense of what new flavors might go well together. Nothing seems torqued up, seafood and accompaniments were in equilibrium, and the fish always gained, rather than lost, in the bargain. Pollinger is a rising star and I'm delighted he's carrying on the tradition Oceana began as one of New York's great seafood restaurants fifteen years ago.

John Mariani is well known for his frank and poignant writing in Esquire, Wine Spectator, Diversion and the Harper Collection. He is author of The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, The Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink and co-author, with his wife, of the Italian-American Cookbook.