The Best Seafood Restaurants In NYC

Conceived as a steakhouse but for fish, this Nomad restaurant from the Crown Shy/Saga team serves inventive, special-occasion seafood that won't leave you missing red meat. The halibut pithivier, a stunning undersea wellington in burnished puff pastry, is destined for your Instagram grid. It pairs perfectly with the deeply flavorful house au poivre, made with fish bones. Time And Tide is also the only place in the city, and quite possibly the world, where you can eat cacio e pepe squid (surprisingly delicious, with a great char), but our favorite dish on the menu is the bright, silky mackerel escabeche.

If you're looking for the city's best lobster roll, this East Village spot from a Claud alum wins. Saucy, rich, and filled with cubes of lobster so tender they're almost raw, Smithereens takes a New England favorite and brings it to an East Village basement. Come for funky seafood in a space that feels like a sexy submarine—we especially like the smoked bluefish hiding under a thin buckwheat pancake slathered in honey butter, and the bowl of beans, which sounds kind of whatever, until you dip your spoon in and find red shrimp, mussels, squid, and knobs of uni.

Sitting in Crevette’s big dining room, slurping down oysters with coriander mignonette and mussels with a smoky brava sauce, you could easily be convinced that you’re somewhere in the south of France. Wake up, because you’re actually in the West Village. Start with raw seafood, then get a luscious tuna belly on a rosti, and finish it off with an immaculately buttery whole dover sole. If there are squid and beans on the menu, get them.

Do you dream of drowning in ceviche? Head to Ensenada. The Williamsburg Mexican seafood oasis works for just about any occasion—a third date, a solo Happy Hour at the bar, your dad’s birthday—so long as your fellow diners are ready to ceviche-submerge, too. Order all three types of aguachile, both the saucy shrimp and crispy fish tacos, and a couple of rounds of mezcal margaritas. It’s a low-key spot where you can usually walk in without a reservation, grab a seat in a blue booth, and then eat more seafood in one sitting than you have in the past few years.

Every time we get a shrimp cocktail, we’re a little disappointed in ourselves. Those three shrimp were nice, but were they really worth more than a movie ticket? At Penny in the East Village, the Argentinian shrimp are a finger long, a little sweet, cost $4.50 each—and we ordered three more immediately after the first round. The high-quality raw stuff at this 31-seat seafood counter from the Claud team includes oysters, clams, and mussels, and a lot of them can be sampled in the Ice Box—Penny’s take on the seafood tower. But it’s only a teaser. Follow it with a dinner of confit oysters, stuffed squid, and a brioche ice cream sandwich.

Dry-aged branzino tastes better when roasted in a charcoal oven and served in a beige room best described as desert chic. For a casual night out with lots of smoky flavors and very fine ceramics, choose Theodora. At this Fort Greene spot from the team that brought you Miss Ada, fish is the focus, and the menu leans Mediterranean, with unexpected twists. Eat some yellow fin tuna served on lavash, and wood-fired prawns with pineapple pico de gallo. Reservations are hard to come by, but there are a few tables and plenty of bar seats saved for walk-ins.

For your next anniversary, book a table at Le Bernardin. The Midtown fine-dining staple serves a bit of filet mignon here and there, but otherwise it’s pretty much all seafood. Whether you get the $350 chef’s tasting or the $215 prix fixe, you’re going to eat a procession of immaculately plated items like thinly pounded yellowfin tuna, langoustine with foie gras, and planks of halfway-cooked salmon. The service is flawless, the wine list is extensive, and the carpeted dining room is typically filled with high-net-worth individuals.

Quique Crudo only seats around 20 at a bar and a few small counters. From the people behind Casa Enrique, the walk-in-only spot has very little elbow room, and yet there always seems to be an open stool. This is the rare West Village establishment that hasn't been hyped to death, and it’s a fun place to pop in for an impeccable margarita and an ultra-tart ceviche served with thick homemade tostadas. The snack-sized dishes aren’t exactly cost-effective—a meal for one can easily run you $100—but that’s a given when it comes to quality seafood.

This stall in Flushing’s bustling New York Food Court puts crab roe—a Shanghainese specialty—front and center in many of its incredible dishes. If you order just one thing at the counter (the first one on your left when you enter), make it the silky, comforting crab roe over noodles. But many of the supporting-act ingredients at Xie Bao shine just as bright, like the flaky yellow croaker in noodle soup.

This New Orleans-inspired spot in Fort Greene serves oysters five ways and offers shrimp in states ranging from cocktail to remoulade. Get your shrimp in fried form, between two squares of puffy milk bread, with a goblet of rum and hurricane mix on the side. If you’re looking for a fun and easy sit-down lunch, Strange Delight also does a daytime set meal that comes with your choice of seafood entree, plus three sides like red beans and cornbread. And it all comes on a glossy green tray that really rounds out the restaurant’s retro diner feel.

British seafood isn’t just fish and chips. At Dame in Greenwich Village, it also means smoked whitefish croquettes and tuna tartare on toast,. The roughly 30-seat restaurant (with more tables outside) is relatively casual, but their food is not. Start with the charred squid skewers, then explore other small plates like the broiled oysters and snap pea salad with peekytoe crab. If you have room after that, there’s also, yes, fish and chips. Prime-time reservations are elusive, but there are usually a few early and late time slots available.

There are seven locations of Los Tacos No. 1 around town, but, for some reason, there’s only one Los Mariscos. This counter-service spot tucked into the side of Chelsea Market is from the same team, and it serves fantastic fish tacos, ceviche, and aguachile. There’s a bit of seating inside, in addition to some sidewalk tables where you can camp out and drink a margarita when the weather’s nice.

At Chuan Tian Xia, the fish breathe fire. You’ll see a lot of whole fish here, like groupers and tilapias, skin on with their mouths agape, sitting in a menacing red chili oil or pickled yellow broth. This Sichuan spot in Sunset Park is known for their big, shareable trays of Wanzhou grilled fish, which you can get with hot, numbing, or a mild tomato broth and any number of other hot pot toppings like enoki mushroom, noodles, and sweet potato. Coming with a group and a strong gut is ideal, but if we’re only with one other person, we’re just as excited to eat the fish fileted and boiled in their addicting green pepper stew instead.

From the people behind Hart’s, The Fly, and Eel Bar, Cervo’s is where you can eat Spanish and Portuguese seafood while you take in a candlelit scene. The narrow room is perpetually busy, and the menu has a lot of small plates, like manila clams, mussels escabeche, and crispy shrimp heads. No matter what you get, take advantage of the interesting Spanish and Portuguese wine list.

Ganjang gejang, raw soy-marinated crab, is a classic Korean dish that’s rarely a primary focus for restaurants. At Rice Thief, it’s the main event. Every platter they serve looks like the glittering, glistening crown jewels of a deep-sea kingdom, but taking your first bite of sweet, jelly-like Gunsan crab—a coveted variety flown in from Korea—is like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy steps into Technicolor. The wild red Argentine shrimp are also outstanding, with a sweetness and texture like ocean candy.

Astoria Seafood combines a BYOB experience with the thrills of grocery shopping. In the back of the cafeteria-like room, you’ll find displays of sea bass, shrimp, squid, and more arranged over ice. Choose what you want—six sardines and a branzino, for example—then bag it yourself, and tell the kitchen how you’d like it cooked (grilled is never a bad idea). To supplement, there are also some Greek sides available, like spanakopita and lemon potatoes.

If it’s above 59 degrees outside, you should know that’s technically referred to as “Johnny's Reef weather.” Get in a car (or hop on a bus) and make your way to this City Island institution, where you can dive into a pile of fried shrimp on a sprawling concrete patio near the water. Order in the indoor area that’s set up like a food hall with counters offering steamed and fried clams, scallops, lobster tails and more, and pair everything with a Henny Colada in a little plastic cup.

Plan a group meal at Wu’s Wonton King on the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The room is festive with big round tables, and it’s always packed with people who appreciate a BYOB policy and quality Cantonese seafood. Obviously start with the wonton soup, then try some fried lobster, walnut shrimp, and cold jellyfish.

Abuqir is similar to Astoria Seafood, with a few key differences: it’s Egyptian, and there isn't much seating. If you’re making a decision between the two based on food alone, you should know that it’s slightly better here. This Astoria spot makes incredible grilled shrimp, Egyptian-style whole fish, and olive oil-soaked baba ganoush. The room is bright, with a handful of tables, and it’s as casual as it gets.

Across the street from Central Park, Marea specializes in housemade pastas accessorized with lobster, shrimp, and other ingredients that were recently dragged from the sea. The theme here is coastal Italian, and the offerings—from the crudi to the langoustines—are almost exclusively oceanic. Get the jumbo lump crab casarecce, and don’t miss out on the fusilli with octopus and bone marrow. This place is perfect for a big night out, but it’s also great for a meal in the daytime when the mood is more relaxed.

It’s been too long since you visited Grand Central Oyster Bar. We get it—subjecting yourself to a Grand Central Terminal visit without a train to catch feels wrong. But underneath all the tourists staring obliviously at the celestial ceilings lies Grand Central Oyster Bar, the cavernous seafood spot where you should eat raw oysters at least once a year. Order a dirty martini, skip the rest of the menu—except for the clam chowder—and let whoever’s shucking decide on your dozen. It’s a NYC institution, and the couple at the table next to you have been coming here for around 50 years to eat the catch of the day.

There are a lot of places to eat raw seafood in NYC, but not many of them are so close to the water that you could eat a raw clam and then throw your shell into the sea. Except for Randazzo’s, a Sheepshead Bay staple that’s been open since 1932. It shines in the summer after a long day at Brighton Beach when you are too sunburnt and too sandy to do anything except eat, but we’ve also visited in February to slurp clams and pretend we are in Florida. They’re famous for their fried calamari, which is served with homemade marinara sauce, but a visit to Randazzo’s isn’t complete without a full spread—think dozens of raw bivalves, and big platters of seafood pasta.