Three Perfect Meals
Mariscos El Submarino, Stissing House, & Bridges (beautiful things i ate, april 2026)
We’re tip-toeing towards the start of summer in New York City, meaning my calendar is quickly filling up with plans for long weekend get-aways, last minute afterwork dinner plans—truthfully, any excuse to get myself out of the apartment for as long as possible. When it’s a beautiful day, time spent inside feels like a waste. Find me sitting in a park, sun shining on my exposed shoulders.
I finally visited Mariscos El Submarino in April. Less than a week later, I visited again. I’m unsurprised when so many of my dear friends with excellent taste say this is their favorite restaurant in New York, and I’m shocked it was snubbed by the NYT best restaurant list—it felt like a spot-on fit for Ligaya Mishan’s collection.
Both times I visited, I let my coworkers take control of ordering. Over the course of my two visits, I tried both green and red aguachile, the tropical ceviche, la exotica, head on grilled prawns, and a number of tacos, including el gobernador, el deliciso, and the craken.
At this point, I feel like there isn’t really a wrong way to order here—the raw seafood is the highlight (I think the tropical ceviche with mango fresco is my favorite, the green aquachiles a close second)—but even the cooked items like the cheesy shrimp tacos are a hit. Everything is spicy, incredibly flavorful dishes that leave your lips feeling tingly. Marisco’s is a restaurant that draws you back over and over again; the menu is large enough that makes it impossible to try everything in one go, the vibes are high (the Clinton Hill location has a large covered back patio), and the drinks are (apparently) deliciously strong, if that’s your thing.
Stissing House has been at the top of my dream must-visit restaurant list for the better part of three years. Truthfully, I’ve never made any real effort to visit, seeing as it’s a 2.5-3.5 hour traffic dependent drive. Lucky for me, it wound up being an ideal stopping point for dinner during a road trip up to MASS MoCA.
Bailey, Paige and Basil picked me up from work around 3:30pm on the last Sunday in April. Basil and I were debating dinner—should we drive all the way up to Porches, our home for the night, and grab food nearby? We noticed Stissing House wasn’t too far out of the way, though there were no tables available online for that evening. I quickly found their number, then chatted with the lovely hostess who made us a reservation for 7:30pm.
It was still light out when we arrived, so I quickly got to exploring the house, appreciating the light streaming through the gorgeous large windows scattered around each wall. Once settled, we placed our order: pickles, oysters, a cup of broth, spring salad, coal roasted scallops, Bang Island mussels, Tivoli Farm mushrooms, grilled bavette steak, and the pork and braised escarole sausage. Our bread arrived, slightly tangy and plucked from a central table with a generous mound of butter, scooped from a large mountain by our server. I loved watching them scoot around the table, grabbing cutlery and plates, uncovering the giant mound of dairy as a welcome start to the meal.
We picked through our house pickles—fennel, cauliflower, celery, carrots—and passed around a mug of their broth, which was poured table-side over a loosely wound bundle of herbs; it’s difficult to explain how perfect a simple cup of broth could be, but this one was full-bodied, earthy and umami, an immediate ‘this-could-fix-me’ style drink.
The spring salad arrived next, a simply dressed pile of lettuces and quickly blanched asparagus and snap peas, cloaked with a thin shaving of Goliath, a grassy cows’ milk cheese. This was my ideal salad; much of the body made up with seasonal vegetables; a light, slightly punchy dressing; a slightly sharp cheese to round out the whole thing. Once cleared, our coal-roasted scallops arrived, sitting pretty inside their shells. Completely tender and bathed in green garlic butter, this dish is wonderfully decadent, preferably eaten with extra bread to slurp up all of the excess sauce.
The Tivoli Farm mushrooms were gently roasted with bayleaf, topped with a handsome scoop of Ardith Mae chévre, and served with more bread. It was at this point that we decided Stissing House’s real talent is creating something marvelous in it’s simplicity, especially with vegetables.
Last to arrive was the grilled bavette steak, served rare, with horseradish cream and curly spigarello, and the pork and braised escarole sausage with morels and pea leaves. The steak had a nice crust, with a succulent interior, and I loved eating pieces alongside the spigarello and lightly spicy cream. My favorite main was the sausage; plated cut on a bias with taut, crisped skin, and a well seasoned filling, sitting over morels and peas, it was a perfectly springy dish.
We finished the meal with the rye brownie hot fudge sundae, plus a scoop of both coffee toffee crunch and salted malted chocolate chip ice cream. We were celebrating Basil’s birthday, and our server realized she had accidentally dropped our desserts without a candle; she quickly rushed over with a complimentary slice of their coconut cake, which none of us necessarily wanted to order but felt like fools upon first bite. The slice is massive—the cake it’s cut from must be twelve inches or so—featuring a bouncy, buttery coconut cake piled high with fluffy coconut infused whipped cream, an absolute masterpiece of a confection.
Bailey and I had a pretty perfect anniversary this year. We started the day at World Spa in Midwood, hopping between the numerous banyas, saunas, and onsens for almost five hours. After we showered and changed, we trained back to the city for dinner at Bridges.
Tucked inside an unassuming Chinatown block, Bridges' tawny-hued dining room feels immediately chic and sexy. The nutty wood bar is illuminated by amber-toned lights, the tables clothed in white, surrounded by leather seats.
We started with the house toasted rice bread and butter alongside the duck and celery broth with ginger. The bread was chewy with a lovely fermented flavor, and I loved the broth—deeply fragrant, covered in an abundance of chives floating above pools of oil. Next, my favorite dish of the evening: cured tuna with dates and young onion. This dish was so excellent; the tuna had a silky, firm texture from it’s cure, swathed over a sweet date stuffed with young onion, cooked until caramelized and sugary. I felt sad when they cleared our plate, wondering if we should order another.
We split a salad of cara cara oranges, chicories and caprino goats cheese, plus the comté tart with morel mushrooms and leek, which was a surprising delight. The custard was velvet smooth and slightly nutty, sprinkled with a layer of morels and a thin leek draped over the top.
We split two mains: a filet of trout with mussels, bergamot and swiss chard, and the roasted golden chicken with sunchoke, walnut and aligot. Candidly, we barely touched our chicken—we over-ordered and after devouring the fish, had no room for poultry—but the few bites we did eat were phenomenal.
I spent the last week of April visiting Portland, Maine for the first time. Expect a newsletter about that trip in your inbox soon. xx
