NYCReview
The Fulton
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There’s nothing subtle about The Fulton. It’s from a French chef who has more than 35 restaurants around the world. This one is located on Pier 17, a development at the Seaport that has multiple places to eat, a cocktail bar, and a rooftop concert venue. The Fulton itself is massive, with two floors, hundreds of seats, a giant sea monster mural, and very good views of the Brooklyn Bridge. And the fact that they serve seafood in a nautically-themed indoor/outdoor space on the water next to what used to be a fish market is so on the nose that it’s a talking fish mascot away from parody.
If your tourist trap radar is going off, we can’t blame you. After all, a lot of people probably come here for the impressive views and the opportunity to say “Jean-Georges” out loud. But even if you think of yourself as a savvy New Yorker, The Fulton is impressive, and it’s where you’ll find some of the very best seafood in the city.
Despite the steady parade of seafood towers and the big windows overlooking the river, the Fulton doesn’t try to impress with formality. There are no white tablecloths, and rather than chandeliers, the lights hang from dock lines on the ceiling. The servers make jokes and high-five you for ordering another bottle of wine at lunch, and even though the wine list is overpriced and surprisingly limited, every bottle of Italian and Spanish white wine is under $60. That means you can drink plenty of seafood-friendly wine while focusing your spending and attention on the seafood itself.
The food here ranges from dishes that involve 10-minute tableside preparations, to others that entail little more than shepherding a high-quality piece of fish from some faraway dock to your plate. The end result of both is the same, and it’s perfectly prepared seafood worth weaving through cargo shorts and croakies to get to. Of the simply prepared options, which include seven types of crudos and seven types of seafood lightly cooked in olive oil, the best are the sea scallops. They come with a sweet charred crust on the outside, and the nearly raw meat at the center somehow tastes like butter from a very pampered cow.
On the other end of the spectrum are dishes that crank the dial way up on production value, and turn out equally excellent. The juicy soft shell crab looks like it’s wearing a flower crown of colorful shaved radishes. Chunks of lobster the size of golf balls come mixed in with the longevity noodles. Then there’s the whole black sea bass, the best and most over-the-top dish here. It’s deboned tableside, and served inside a pastry shell that looks like an ornamental wooden family heirloom dating back to Poseidon himself. With every bite, you’ll get flaky bread, meaty fish, and sauce as rich as anything on the dessert on the menu. It’s enough to feed four, and the only downside to ordering it for two (like the menu suggests) is that you’ll have to carry some phenomenal leftovers home.
Even the non-seafood options on the menu are prepared perfectly, like a burger topped with gruyere and dijon chili mayo that serves as a solid reminder why humans started domesticating farm animals 10,000 years ago.
It’d be easy for The Fulton to rely on its location to bring in crowds, and then serve overpriced food to people too focused on Jean-Georges’ name to notice. Feel free to take these preconceptions with you into a meal here. And if it somehow makes you feel like more of a New Yorker, feel free to ignore the unobstructed views of the bridge over the river, too. Because as soon as you take your first bite of a scallop, you’ll realize that even though there are tourists here, it’s not a tourist trap.
Food Rundown
Crudos
Scallops
Octopus
Soft Shell Crab
Longevity Noodles
Fish Stew
photo credit: Emily Schindler