Harbour

Too bad this isn't Harbour Island...

When I received the email from Thrillist (one of the many list serves that I read to find out NYC happenings), I though that Harbour was a place I would like. It had everything I needed: In Tribeca (I’m trying to spread my wings away from the west village), seafood (everyone knows my love of scallops, et al) and brand spankin new. Ok, so I don’t have the best record when it comes to picking restaurants. Most of the good places I have gone to have been because my boyfriend is obsessed with food, and therefore obsessed with reading reviews and picking the best places. I, on the other hand, love going to new places, even though the first week a restaurant opens isn’t necessarily the best time to go. Restaurants need time to come into their own. But, this place was different. There are 10 wines under $20. That is unheard of in NYC, let alone anywhere. I needed to give it a chance.

That was the only chance I will ever give Harbour. An almost eerie copy of one of my all time favorite NYC restaurants, Lure Fishbar, Harbour is decorated like the inside of a ship. No, not a spaceship, which would have been super dope, but, more like a super fancy sailboat. The decorations reminded me of something my parents would have picked out for their home in 1989. Not ugly, just not right. But again, there was the wine under $20. I just kept repeating to myself…

Let’s get something straight before we start: Just because you serve an amuse bouche and a light dessert/palate cleanser at the end of the meal, doesn’t make you a four star restaurant. For appetizers (we were with another couple) we ordered the Sea Bream sashimi, scallop ceviche, clam chowder and the topneck clams. Let’s start there… the sea bream sashimi, although I did not taste it, looked proper enough. The scallop ceviche wasn’t THAT bad. Remember my complaint about L’artusi’s scallop ceviche? Sea urchin… I’m not 100% sure why restaurants think it’s a good idea to mix soft, supple raw scallops with tough unappetizing sea urchin. I guess it’s an acquired taste that I have yet to acquire. The scallops and the sauce were good, although I’m not sure which kind of scallops they were, as they were not whole, they were more like slices. The clam chowder, again I did not taste, looked really odd. That’s the best way I can start describing it. I’ll finish by saying that clam chowder should not be brown. Or, if you are going to be serving brown clam chowder, at least note it on the menu that it will be as such. The topneck clams, all three of them, were mediocre as well.

Then comes dinner (after our first bottle of, actually great, $19 liter bottle of Gruner)… I ordered the Red Hake. The menu was very small, so the options few. I had never heard of Red Hake, but for the sake of trying new things, and because I didn’t want to eat chicken at a seafood restaurant, I gave it a go. Red Hake is a tough white fish with no apparent taste. It was a bad choice, although the other choice, mussels, didn’t seem that good of an idea either. Mussels are a boring substitute for a meal. But again, no choices here. The red hake had no taste, was tough, and was covered with spicy yellow curry foam. The only saving grace of the dish was the two small shrimp shu mai, if you could find them.

No reason to go to Harbour, unless in the next couple of months you feel like it will improve in some way… note: the only other restaurant that is worse in the city is AGO. I went there the first week it opened and the only good part of the meal was the fresh parmesan cheese on top of the salad. I hear that it is still bad there.

I almost forgot to mention that on a Saturday night at 9pm in NYC, there was not a soul at the bar. Ok, so that street in Tribeca isn’t the first place one would normally choose to hang out, but still not a good sign.

But, $20 wine…

Late Addition: I was told to say that two of the diners at this dinner had the best part of their meal before we entered the restaurant. I should have taken it as foreshadowing when the boys insisted on ordering two CrifDogs before dinner.... we would have been better off staying and going to PDT. But, please dont tell anyone that...