We had an amazing time at Oceana, the recently relocated seafood palace close to the Theater District on 49th Street. We sat at the bar and the staff was incredibly accommodating and friendly. The seafood was all fresh and pretty inventive. I especially enjoyed a sausage stuffed seafood dish, where the chef ingeniously used a calamari as casing and stuffed it with seafood and Italian spices to make it taste like a full-on pork sausage, but there was no meat involved whatsoever. It was a playful and surprising dish and this is what excites me about trying new food.
But the reason we came to Oceana was to cross another item off the list and this came at the end of our meal, as the list item was one of their desserts: a very decadent Dougnut Platter. They offered it in two sizes and the bartender thankfully talked us down from the large version.
Each platter comes with five different doughnuts all with different toppings or fillings. It’s a pretty cool idea because you get to try a little bit of everything, which is something I always love.
And each of the doughnuts was designed differently. There was the yeast (earl tea glazed), the cake (pumpkin spiced), the filled (salty caramel custard), the fritter (sour pineapple), and the hole (chocolate cocoa nib). Sounded amazing!
But these doughnuts weren’t terribly fresh. I can’t imagine they were made to order (maybe it’s not possible with all the special Early Gray frosting and spice pumpkin crispies). And we did order them right before the restaurant closed, but they felt like they had been sitting out for a while. While the flavors were interesting, it didn’t feel worth the calories and the heartburn.
Would Oceana’s Doughnut Platter make my Top 100 of the year? The dougnuts get a 5 out of 10, but the rest of our time at Oceana was great and I would definitely rate the overall dining experience in my top 100.
