New York subscribers received unique early entry to this story in Consuming New York, a e-newsletter that includes meals information and recommendation straight from our critics’ mouths. Join right here to get it in your inbox.
King salmon pâté with rice crackers at Subsequent Door.
Photograph: Grub Road
I’ve by no means met a Cease & Shopaholic or a dyed-in-the-wool Gristedean, however I positively know some Wegmaniacs. The Rochester-based grocery chain evokes a sort of fanatical devotion that few retailers can match — apart from Publix in Florida and perhaps Dealer Joe’s, I can’t consider one. (Most individuals discover it fairly doable to be entire with out Entire Meals.) However when Wegmans arrived downstate, first within the Brooklyn Navy Yard, then within the former Kmart on Astor Place, the thrill was past even what I’d have dreamed. This month, Wegmans adopted the success of its hometown high-end-sushi restaurant, Subsequent Door, with a high-end-sushi restaurant, Subsequent Door, by its Manhattan retailer.
Although I’m a non-direct descendant of Rochester — my father grew up there, Monroe Excessive College class of ’59 — I haven’t been to Subsequent Door. Nevertheless it will get adoring evaluations from locals (“Such a ravishing restaurant. It doesn’t really feel such as you’re in Rochester!” reads one assessment on OpenTable), and I’ve heard of no less than one rehearsal dinner being hosted there. So it fell to the critic to see what all of the fuss is about.
This week, I had dinner at Subsequent Door, which, no less than within the metropolis, just isn’t even actually subsequent door — the one entrance is indoors, by way of the market. There, previous a refrigerated case of ready-to-cook shrimp, is the golden entrance to the restaurant, which could as properly be one other world: gold filigree, large street-facing home windows, faux-terrazzo flooring, velvet seating. In an ever-more-NYU-ified Astor Place, Subsequent Door matches proper in. It has the muzzy consolation of a dressy lodge foyer. It’s a ravishing restaurant, as this stuff go, although, tempo OpenTable, it doesn’t actually really feel such as you’re in New York. If something, it sort of feels such as you’re in Rochester.
There’s nothing flawed with the sushi at Subsequent Door, which flies in its fish from Japan, Norway, and New Zealand and prepares it behind a protracted marble-topped sushi counter. (I couldn’t assist however discover that the ahi sashimi within the grocery case exterior is from South Korea.) It’s simply that it’s laborious to see what distinguishes it from the weekday sushi choices that radiate out across the East Village round it, apart from its weekend costs. Subsequent Door isn’t low-cost. We paid $52 for a six-piece number of nigiri, which included yellowtail, salmon roe, tuna, sea bream, salmon, and scallop, all fresh-tasting and properly sliced however all fish primarily sourced from the sushi starter pack. The few specialty nigiri had been normal fare, aside from a seared scallop with brown butter and uni, which tasted distractingly of pastry.
In actual fact, the dominant taste of a lot of what I sampled at Subsequent Door, from the yellowtail sashimi with “ceviche relish” to the nigiri to robata-grilled half-lobster with tarragon butter and lime dashi, was a fruity sweetness. “Is there something right here that’s gonna style like fish?” my buddy Liz whispered as programs got here out. It was laborious to flee the sensation that Subsequent Door is providing pop sushi, made palatable for the choosy, sushi with dipping sauce. (Our nigiri got here topped with sweet-onion relish, yuzu, or a miso-soy glaze.) Between its gussied-up fish and glitzy furnishings, Subsequent Door jogged my memory of nothing a lot as one other New York transplant, now lengthy gone: the previous Sushisamba on Seventh Avenue South, a Miami expat that used to supply social sushi with a Brazilian beat.
I’m positive I take my life in my palms to say as a lot. Wegmaniacs, if Subsequent Door sates your urge for food for high-end, and high-priced, sushi out of your favourite Monroe County grocer, then bon appétit. However in a sushi-stocked city, it’s laborious to know what else distinguishes Subsequent Door. There are costlier locations for exhibiting off, higher or extra creative preparations for purists and for iconoclasts. But when Subsequent Door is to be your gateway to New York Metropolis’s different sushi choices, go forward and stroll by way of it.
Join Consuming New York
Weekly meals information, straight from our critics’ mouths and only for subscribers.
Vox Media, LLC Phrases and Privateness Discover
See All