With business partner Chris Cannon, chef Michael White of Convivio and Alto is opening Marea, a high-end seafood restaurant on Central Park South in the old San Domenico space, sometime next month. The restaurant has already enjoyed a spectacular avalanche of pre-opening hype: Eater ran photos of a fiberglass ladder and spackle buckets inside the raw, under-construction space, others followed suit, The Feedbag fumed at Metromix because of their exclusive food porny preview, then The Feedbag published Marea’s architectural renderings.
The Feed (no relation) had exclusive details about a 17-seat crudo bar, the Times used Marea’s pre-opening page as a cautionary recession era tale, everyone had more menu preview photos, and a Feedbag video with chef White was picked up by Chubarama, a blog dedicated to the beauty of big men! This all happened during the last two months—perhaps a photo-essay of Michael White’s pocket contents or a Bob Fosse-style Marea dance number featuring jazz hands cod milt will also all appear before the restaurant opens.
And now there’s a new entrant to the Michael White media sweepstakes. The Summer issue of WSJ Magazine has an article on the chef and Marea’s multimillion dollar opening. The full article is here, and WSJ has also put up a slide show of White explaining about loving mackerel, the value of harvesting diver scallops carefully, and the proper care and dressing of sea urchin gonads, which will be served in their spiky shells (or "in the cup") at Marea. It's worth a visit if you like pictures of fresh fish.
