Lure Fishbar

Two weeks ago, I met up with my freshman year roommate at Lure Fishbar. Jamie moved to New York back in July all the way from Los Angeles, but we haven’t been able to meet up until now because we’ve both been so busy! Luckily, we finally set our schedules for a Monday night dinner to catch up (we haven’t seen each other since graduation!) and to talk about all of the adventures she’s been on since moving here.

Jamie and I were randomly assigned to be roommates in Weston our freshman year of college. We shared a tiny room but had a lot of fun that year. We used to make ramen, have dance parties, and watch television on Saturday mornings when there was a vet showing off different breeds of puppies. Here we are with our other friend, Becca, on the first week of school:

And here we are now:

Jamie moved to Los Angeles after graduating and then moved to New York over the summer because her boyfriend, Ryan, had an amazing opportunity to work in New York! I’m so glad she’s here because I really don’t have enough female friends in the city.

We agreed to meet up at Lure Fishbar because we were both slightly interested in the Restaurant week menu. When we arrived, we decided against the restaurant week menu because it really wasn’t that great and decided to order a la carte instead. For an appetizer, we shared the beet and goat cheese salad:

The salad was very simple, but the beets were very delicious with the arugula and toasted hazelnuts. It’s very easy to recreate at home – canned beets work if you can’t find any fresh beets (I usually get beets at the farmer’s market because I never seem to find them in grocery stores).

For my main course, I went with the lobster roll:

The lobster roll at Lure is the most expensive one I’ve had in NYC (it costs $29 – the most I’ve paid is $26, at Pearl Oyster Bar). However, the bun is perfectly buttered and toasted, the chunks of lobster meat are quite large, and it felt and looked like the lobster roll was larger than other ones I’ve had in the city. The chips were salt and vinegar but very unevenly seasoned; some were so salty that they burned my tongue, others were plain and a little soggy. I brought Lou some of the lobster roll and he actually said it was the best lobster roll he’s had in the city (I think the only place he hasn’t been is Mermaid Inn, however, they don’t have a roll, it’s more of a bun).

Jamie ordered the roasted sea scallops:

The scallops came with polenta, mussel chorizo stew, and a little cilantro. Jamie didn’t like the chorizo stew because it completely altered the taste of the scallops and thought the dish was way too meaty and smoky.

The restaurant was absolutely packed for a Monday night (seriously, we went around 9pm and every table in the restaurant was spoken for) but it didn’t affect our service. In fact, I would say that our waitress was a little too aggressive in helping us; she came by every two minutes when we first arrived to ask if we were ready to order. Some of the menu items at Lure lean towards an Asian influence, which is part of the reason why we decided against the Restaurant Week menu. I’d like to see their salmon prepared in other ways besides being in an “Asian broth” (by the way, what exactly IS an Asian broth?), especially since it’s such an American-style restaurant.