We have reached peak crudo.
At Il Totano, Penny, Theodora, and Corima, witness the rise of raw.
Maybe it’s because we are in summer in the age of climate crisis that I cannot get myself to eat anything hot (a bowl of pasta might actually make me expire). Then again it could be my hot flashes that turn my body into a molten cave that have me running from anything roasted or grilled. Or it could be that I just love the idea of a cool plate of raw fish bathed in citrus and chiles and a drizzle of olive oil? Whatever the cause, I am having a full on love affair with crudo at the moment. And it seems the chefs of the city are ready to oblige, because I’ve never before been so impressed and overwhelmed by crudo until this summer.
My love affair began in early June, at dinner with my friend Steven at Theodora where chef Tomer Blechman begins his menu with an entire section devoted to the dish. We had big eye tuna in slabs that tasted almost like wagyu, served with mango, wasabi and lavash; silky pink slices of Ora King Salmon tucked under the heat of dill zhug and bracing tang of cippolini onions; a dish of Hiramasa (yellowtail) so flavorful it was served with little more than avocado sprinkled with dashi and a generous squeeze of juicy lime. The last was a lovely striped bass under a flurry of soft herbs: cilantro and basil with pineapple that’s wood fired to set off the sweetness with a little smoke. All of these, on one menu, in one night. Heaven.
At Harold Dieterle’s Il Totano, which celebrates Southern Italy and the chef’s love of fish, crudo also takes the spotlight. His menu features four crudo every night, and you can just go and have those and a bottle of cold white wine from Sicily (a Grillo perhaps?) and forget that our democracy has been hijacked by the Supreme Court.
Diver Sea Scallops are shaved into buttery slices in a bowl of pickled ramp aquapazza; dry-aged Kona Kampachi is served in supple slices with fresh chickpeas in a spicy passion fruit colatura, an aged Italian fish sauce made from anchovies and Sicilian sea salt. I want colatura on everything from now on.
His tuna is aged longest, and has a certain elegance you might expect from maturity; it is dressed up in a nice caponata and given some salty crunch with fried capers. Arctic char gets just a little hit of cooking from coal, just a whisper, and comes in a vivid celery vinaigrette, crowned with crispy serrano chilis and a sprinkle of volcanic sea salt to punch up the flavors even further.
Chef Fidel Caballero’s restaurant, Corima, leans into the recipes of northern Mexico (he grew up in Texas), but with a nod to Japanese techniques and flavors. Caballero is not doing an entire section of crudo (I wish he would), but the one he does have on the menu I’d gladly order four times so it could become its own meal.
His crudo is made from kampachi that he slices into silvery rectangles and stands up on the plate, lined up like dominos, sandwiching the slices with a filling of crunchy salty, porky chicharron furikake (please put this in a bag so I can take it to the movies) and crisp celtuce, then dresses it all in a husk cherry salsa and grassy olive oil. This is a gorgeous dish, brilliant in flavor and in design.
Also, while clearly not crudo, I can’t write about Corima without calling out the flour tortillas. They are beyond your wildest tortilla dreams, made from sourdough starter, flour from Hermosillo in Mexico, and butter. He cooks them on an upside-down wok with a blowtorch. They are charred in all the right places, and chewy and served with something called “recado negro,” a butter that’s made with burnt chiles, shallot, garlic, and onion. You’ll want this on everything just like the colatura. We ordered one basket and quickly doubled down. Don’t miss them.
There are more crudos to praise — of course you’ve heard about the crudo at Penny, the seafood counter chef Joshua Pinsky opened with Chase Sinzer opened recently upstairs from Claud. The menu here is all seafood and much of it is raw. I haven’t been able to get in, but from what friends and Pete Wells say, it is essential, so that’s on the top of my list for crudo this week.
Crudos are everywhere this summer, waiting to cool you down and take you away to a place where the ocean sprays salt into the air, and the sun sets like a ripe peach over the sea, and the people charged with protecting our democracy actually do.