http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/dining/karasu-zadies-oyster-room-review.html 2016-10-18 17:57:54 They May Be Bars, but Don’t Tell the Chefs Karasu in Brooklyn and Zadie’s Oyster Room in the East Village aren’t content to serve Tater Tots. === Restaurants have made bar food their own. In fancy kitchens serving fancy dining rooms, chefs have found almost inconceivably fancy ways to make pub and roadhouse food. The burgers are ground to order and slapped on rolls fresh out of the oven; the hot dogs are squirted with proprietary condiments; the Tater Tots are enrolled in elite private day care. Bars have to fight back somehow. Some of the smartest ones are taking the high road. They’re serving what would have been considered To get to These speakeasy shenanigans may annoy you, particularly when the speakeasy in question is advertised on a chalkboard out on the sidewalk, but it’s hard to hold a grudge once you’re inside. Dark and tranquil, its only window so near the ceiling that the room is effectively cloistered from the street, Karasu is a refuge from noise and crowds. The first surprising thing about the food is that there is any. The second is that it’s so polished and considered. The kitchen is a box at the end of the bar so cramped that most D.J.’s would refuse to work in it. A space this size usually calls for reduced expectations. Yael Peet and Elena Yamamoto, the chefs, have other ideas. Their menu can read like an izakaya’s, but the plates have all sorts of subtle flourishes that most izakayas wouldn’t bother with. Sashimi could be a matter of shopping and slicing. At Karasu, it’s more than that. On a recent night, bonito was marinated in soy and sake, then gently smoked over smoldering mesquite. Finally, it was rolled in ground sesame and seared. A lot had happened to this tuna, but the flavors were restrained, and very agreeable. The wonderful Japanese sweet potatoes, just coming into season, had been deep-fried with kabocha squash and set in a soy-enhanced syrup. Steamed hard-shell clams were excellent in ponzu sauce, and thin slices of octopus made a welcome appearance with crunchy marinated cucumbers. Some things, like the terrific assortment of pickled daikon, work best as punctuation marks between sips of cocktails. When you start thinking about dinner, there is pasta with mentaiko sauce; the spicy red dots of cod roe are embellished with uni, and the thin noodles were rolled and cut on the premises, somewhere. One night they were slightly limp, always a risk with fresh pasta, but on another they were ideally firm and bouncy. If more serious hunger calls, there is a generous tonkatsu, left fairly thick and fried on the bone. Still more impressive is the koji-rubbed rib-eye, forcefully blackened on both sides and served sliced in a skillet, basted in its own fat. In the heat of the moment, I declared that it was better than the steak at Peter Luger. I am pretty sure I meant it. The first few times I walked through the black door, what I had in mind was a mixed drink or two. Overseen by Thomas Waugh, formerly the chief barman at Wine is in the genetic makeup of Zadie’s chef, Devin Dearden, devotes his menu to the oyster in all its edible forms. Oysters are of course served raw on ice, with a good mignonette and an irrelevant cocktail sauce. But they are also broiled under minced seaweed and Parmigiano-Reggiano in a nervy, compelling take on oysters Rockefeller; poached in sherry and cream along with late-summer succotash for a soup that is halfway between oyster stew and chowder; and steamed with garlic, vermouth and butter, a suave oyster-dunking sauce that becomes a soup once you add oyster crackers. The only dud method is pickling, and the problem there may have been that the oysters were lost amid a heap of bitter greens and puréed seaweed. Mr. Canora seems to have realized that the huge growth in cultivating oysters hasn’t been matched by similar progress in cooking them. New York restaurants serve them raw, almost invariably. If Zadie’s can nudge a few chefs into rethinking this, it could signify the start of a new chapter in the city’s long relationship with oysters. And if not, I’ll still drop by when I’ m craving smoked bluefish spread, a New England treat that almost never turns up this far south. And I’ve never craved a tuna melt in my life, but that may only be because I’d never tasted the one at Zadie’s.