It's easy enough to understand why some people might consider the ideal restaurant to be small, owned by the chef, and never varying or expanding. I, too, love that ideal, but only as part of a grander view of modern gastronomy wherein many of the brightest concepts come from restaurant companies with many units throughout a city, a country, even across continents.
Companies like Union Square Hospitality, Myriad Restaurant Group, Patina Group, and BR Guest Hospitality run exciting, often spectacular, restaurants in NYC, many considered to be in the top tier and all created with enormous effort and financial risk. (They also tend to be seriously devoted to food-based charities in the city.)
BR Guest Hospitality runs 25 restaurants, most in NYC, including the highly popular and well-regarded Blue Water Grill, Strip House, Atlantic Grill, and Blue Fin, newly re-opened at the W Hotel in Times Square. With that kind of buying clout in the market, they can claim dibs on what's best on a daily basis, and that quality of ingredients shows throughout the menu at Blue Fin.
The two-story restaurant has been wholly re-designed and it's a dazzler, from the downstairs sushi bar bordered by a suspended staircase and wavy mural to the spacious main dining room upstairs done in wide expanses of polished wood, mirrors, and hanging bare lights. It's casual but New York casual, and there seem just as many locals dining here as tourists.
The large service staff is well trained--they have to deal with a lot of pre-theater pressure--and know the menu cold. The wine and sake list, overseen by Beverage Director Richard Breitkreutz, has breadth and depth, with a focus on the mid-price range. There are many choices by the glass for $11, and the "Sommelier's Selection" has an admirable number of bottles under $50, though mark-ups are not so modest. A barrel-fermented 2014 white Rioja from Bodegas Mura runs $48 here, but only $16 at a wine store.
Executive Sushi Chef Boo "Mike" Lim, formerly of the highly regarded Sushi of Gari, and Executive Chef Juan Carlos Ortega, now with BR Guest for two decades, provide menus rich enough in every category without going overboard. There are ten or so sashimi items offered nightly, at $3 to $8 per piece, and a six-piece sampler of dressed sushi at $28, which I recommend as a large starter. The generous sushi rolls ($12-$16) include the delicious "Times Square" ($15) roll of crab, spicy hamachi, mango, avocado, and yuzu-miso. All the raw seafood is of pristine quality, and the dressed varieties (left) hold more interest, like kampachi with chile and seaweed, the tuna with avocado and ponzu, and eel with grilled pineapple and kojujang, a Korean sweet fermented rice condiment like ketchup. I also highly recommend the charred octopus with smoked paprika, olive oil potatoes and romesco sauce as a fine appetizer ($19).
When you get to the entrees, there is a shift away from Asian flavors in a hearty dish like the lobster pot pie ($35), a kind of American bouillabaisse with mussels, shrimp, and a ruddy, garlic-rich rouille. There is a simply grilled section of dishes, served with lettuce and lemon potatoes, and the night's catch was superbly textured, very juicy branzino (market price). There was plenty of sweet jumbo lump crabmeat atop a fine red snapper ($35), along with sautéed hen of the woods mushrooms and watercress.
Companies like BR Guest are aimed at big eaters and large portions, so the warm apple crostata with dulce de leche and vanilla ice cream ($11), the flourless chocolate layer cake with white chocolate peppermint candy ice cream ($11), and the caramel pear pecan sundae with cinnamon-spiced ice cream ($10)--all ice creams are housemade--are desserts easy for two to share. They even offer "Theater Treats to Go" ($8), a box of warm chocolate chip cookies or caramel popcorn to stave off hunger during the third hour of "Les Misérables" or "Hamilton."
On a post-snowstorm night the upstairs room at Blue Fin was crowded by nine o'clock, but, despite all the wooden surfaces, the decibel level did nothing to compromise our conversation--one of those details that must have gone into the re-design.
Blue Fin belongs right where it is in the Times Square nexus, where, when you leave and see the eye-popping video displays and flashing lights of Broadway, you'll know that your dinner had been just as much a part of the dazzle as the rush of the crowd and the sweet cacophony of the Big Apple.
Blue Fin is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.
Blue Fin
W Hotel
1567 Broadway (near 48th Street)
212-918-1400
bluefinnyc.com