The stargazy pie at Dean’s—a brand new British-ish, pub-ish restaurant on the sting of SoHo—is, in a phrase, freaky. The top of a fish, cooked and shiny grey, emerges from a latticed crust, relating to the ceiling with an unnerving, dull-eyed serenity. A tail protrudes, too, at an reverse angle, giving the impression of a flexed physique hidden beneath the floor of the pastry sea. (In actual fact, the top and tail are unconnected, and principally ornamental, meant to be eliminated earlier than consuming.) This wondrously weird dish originates in Cornwall, the place the story goes {that a} fisherman named Tom Bawcock as soon as braved a winter storm to herald a catch so huge that it saved his entire village from hunger. His neighbors baked the complete haul into an infinite pie, and left the heads of the fishes poking by means of as a celebration of abundance, or perhaps an announcement of survival. The model served at Dean’s is extra modestly sized than the pie of legend, serving one or two, however below its crust, which is nearly obscenely wealthy with butter, is a traditional stargazy filling, a creamy, chowder-adjacent stew of varied fishes and gentle hunks of potato—sizzling and heartening, and never freaky in any respect.
Dean’s is the newest restaurant from Jess Shadbolt and Annie Shi, who met whereas Shadbolt was working on the River Café in London, and whose different New York eating places embody King, the elegant, light-filled, linen-laid restaurant with which Dean’s shares a wall. Lots of people actually adore King, with its ladylike examinations of Italian and French simplicity, however I’ve to confess I’ve by no means been amongst them: it’s at all times felt slightly timid, to me, slightly underbaked—a kitchen occupied with restraint virtually to the purpose of absence. I do love Lei, the Chinatown wine bar that Shi opened final 12 months, although for me its greatest virtues are the temper and the bottle checklist. So I used to be shocked by how a lot I adored the meals at Dean’s, how walloped I felt by it. Shadbolt, who’s the chef, grew up in a coastal city north of London, and Dean’s wears the inheritance plainly, in its unapologetic Britishness; its unabashed embrace of brown and beige; its self-confidently off-putting menu descriptions (“boiled ham,” forsooth!). The restaurant rewards the diner who understands that, at this type of proudly jolie-laide institution, there’s a secret code: the extra vividly horrid-sounding a dish, the extra superb it is going to be. The boiled ham, for example, is heaven: two skinny slices of meat, pink as tongues, with a parsley bechamel dotted with tiny, tender favas, and a mass of rough-mashed potatoes that gave the impression to be practically half butter, salted simply to the ecstatic fringe of overmuch.
