"The journey to the Fulton, the latest Jean-Georges Vongerichten creation, which occupies two floors of Pier 17, at the newly reborn South Street Seaport, can be disorienting. After exiting the Fulton Street subway station, you are likely to muscle through throngs of out-of-towners strolling along the historic port’s bustling cobblestoned streets, where brothels, saloons, and the Fulton Fish Market once stood, and which now feature ice-cream shops and hipster pubs. As you near the water, a nineteenth-century iron-hulled cargo ship named Wavertree looms against an incongruous backdrop of glinting skyscrapers across the East River, and a boxy structure resembling an oversized Christmas gift wrapped in blinding L.E.D. lights announces itself as Pier 17. You may wonder if this is a new iteration of corporate chic trying rather too assiduously to find its groove. By the time you are seated inside, with a wraparound view of the city, sipping a raspberry-lychee Bellini and staring at the shimmering cables draped along the Brooklyn Bridge, you are unequivocally on one side of the urban class divide. This is mitigated, somewhat, by the prices, which are by no means cheap but are not preposterously beyond a mortal’s budget—there are several entrées for less than thirty dollars. Vongerichten, who frequented the Fulton Fish Market when he arrived in New York, three decades ago, conceived of the Fulton as an “homage” to the place where he first learned to shop for fish. (Of his thirty-six restaurants, it’s his first focussed on seafood.) His takeaway—“When you buy the best quality, you don’t have to do much to it,” he has said—belies his knack for taking risks with ingredients that a less capable chef might address with bland conservatism. The fritto-misto salad—a fried medley of shrimp, clams, and calamari—owes its success as much to the seafood as to the unabashedly bold notes of garlic and cayenne in the rémoulade dressing. Among the crudos, the knockout is the Long Island fluke, in a feisty yet refined habañero vinaigrette with mint and Szechuan buds, which teases the palate with the utmost French composure. The warm octopus with fresh mozzarella—at first, a dubious pairing—works because the spongy textures of both are perked up by the lemon vinaigrette on which they are nestled. There is a reason that the Jean-Georges name has become synonymous with a guarantee of quality: nothing on the menu is less than solid, even if some items are less exciting than others. The fish stew, with halibut, scallops, clams, and prawns, is a slightly gussied-up if standard hearty casserole. (“It’s ‘scampish,’ though Jean-Georges would hate me using that word,” an affable waiter said, in a mock whisper.) And the longevity noodle, despite its generous chunks of glazed lobster, feels like a strategic maneuver to globalize the menu. Still, when Vongerichten is at his best, the revisionist tweaks he makes to quotidian dishes are so inspired that one wonders why they ever should have been made any other way. In the fish and chips, the divinely crisped brown-gold batter enfolding the flounder is crumbly perfection, and filling enough to be its own meal. A run-of-the-mill medium-rare salmon fillet is revved up by a peppery crust of spices that complicates without hiding the intense flavor of the sea—the fish tastes like it flopped in straight from the Atlantic right before dinnertime. It’s difficult to go wrong at the Fulton, but not leaving room for dessert is a misstep. Two words: chocolate mousse. The tiny tower of decadence, so elaborately layered with peanut caramel, chocolate crunch, passion-fruit sorbet, and vanilla ice cream that it appears almost indecent, represents the restaurant in a few ostentatiously luscious bites: a routine dessert spruced up into something needlessly sumptuous, but also unimpeachably satisfying. (Entrées $21-$48.)" - Jiayang Fan
