Two new restaurants offer seafood towers for one person
Strange Delight, in Fort Greene, and Penny, in East Village, sell individual seafood towers for $35 and $36.
Seafood towers are usually meant for groups, but raw seafood on crushed ice isn't easy to divide: four prawns, a lobster, and a dozen oysters make splitting it a real arithmetic problem. And in the end, the bill is hard to share.
The Strange Delight tower was born from a text message. Owner Anoop Pillarisetti wrote to his partner, Ham El-Waylly: “Can we offer a tower service for one person for $35?” It stands one story high and features oysters, shrimp, a raw seafood bite, smoked fish pâté, and shrimp remoulade, in keeping with the restaurant’s New Orleans inspiration. It also includes fried crackers, bread, and dessert.
Penny, in the East Village, doesn't serve a tower of seafood but rather a $36 seafood platter. Located above Claud, the restaurant owned by the same team, it caters to walk-ins, with a long bar for one person or a couple. The platter, laden with crushed ice, oysters, clams, pickled mussels, and scallops, resembles a treasure chest. The star of the show is the red prawns from Argentina: one of the owners, Joshua Pinsky, tested nearly a dozen cocktail sauce recipes before perfecting the one.
Both locations allow you to add squid salad, confit eggs or caviar, and expand the tower for more people.
