If a music box ballerina gained sentience and hungered for the nourishment of food you can crack and a bracing martini after so many spins and springs, never untethered from a single fixed place, beautiful, gilded Gage & Tollner would be her destination; the seafood platter, her feast. G&Ts two titular options include a half Maine lobster, oysters, clams and shrimp cocktail for $107, and doubles it all and adds adds fluke crudo for $210, or $290 with a caviar add-on.
A seafood tower is a culinary expression of celebration. It is the ingestible equivalent of flinging confetti into the air, but instead of bits of glitter, shredded paper or varied plastics, oysters, clams, shrimp and lobster land elegantly arranged on darling tiered trays. The tiers are key; anything else and it is but a platter, a plate or sometimes a basket, though plateau is also acceptable parlance and a fishbowl concept could be interesting. But a seafood tower, per se, promises abundance and signals joy. You’ll seldom be offered a seafood tower while waiting for the subway or at the reading of a will, but you can find them at a smattering of waterside restaurants, nautically inclined bars and even landlocked spots that simply embrace and promote splendor.
They’re also a delight to behold, a soothing glimpse of form and function at their most agreeable. Even just an image is an aesthetic break from the chaos of the day, a window to a daydream. You are sipping Sancerre at a sidewalk cafe. You’ve acquired comfortable wealth. We are on a boat right now. Of course they’d be even better to eat, and these are the top tier of seafood towers for a peek and a treat in NYC.
