Kingfisher | New restaurant

“I didn’t know what a crab cake was until 1986,” says Peter McCarthy, the chef-owner of Kingfisher. “I moved to Washington, D.C., to work, and somebody took me to Baltimore, to Fell’s Point, and I sat down and had a crab cake, and I was like, This is the best thing I ever ate.” McCarthy, who has worked with food since he was 13 and attended Washburne Trade School in the ’70s, learned to make crab cakes—“no filler…it’s crab meat”—and developed an affinity for seafood that carried through to his Northwest Side restaurant, Pier 5736, which he closed last year to relocate to Andersonville. “I like the foot traffic, I like how they support their own. Everybody shops locally,” McCarthy explains of the move. But though the location (in a 110-year-old building) and the name (inspired by his partner Jeff Shane’s organic farm of the same name in Indiana) have changed, the focus remains the same: fresh fish delivered daily (“I have a freezer for ice cream; that’s it”), fish-and-chips, a jumbo sea scallop with chipotle glaze, fresh East Coast oysters, calamari…and of course, crab cakes.  5721 N Clark St (773-506-7014, kingfisheronclark.com).