Address: 308-310 Bleecker St., at Grove St.

Phone: (212)675-2009 

Cuisine: Chesapeake seafood

Vibe: Refined neighborhood joint 

Occasion: Oyster binge; Casual date; Group dinner.

Hours: Seven days a week. Dinner, Sun-Wed, 5:30p.m.-12a.m., Thu-Sat, 5:30p.m.-2a.m.

Don't Miss Dish: Arctic Char; Fried chicken; Bay leaf sorbet. 

Average Price: Appetizers, $10 ; Entrees, $20; Dessert, $7.

Reservations: Reservations recommended.

Capsule: Fine fish shack fare & terrific fried chicken in the West Village  

You used to have to wait patiently for summer to arrive to get your  fix of crab chowder, peel 'n eat shrimp, and Old Bay seasoned fries.  Not anymore.   It may be February and freezing, but fish shack fare is in fashion right now.   Choptank, located in the West Village, is the latest in a string of newcomers.   If you wanted a lobster roll a few years ago, you had Pearl Oyster Bar, Grand Central, & Mary's Fish Camp.  That's it.  Now, there's plenty of respectable lobster rolls, including Ed's, Luke's, Mermaid Inn, & Ditch Plains. 

Choptank doesn't have a lobster roll on the menu.  It's New York's first Maryland fish shack.  That translates to crab chowder, crab claws, and Chesapeake Bay oysters.   The kitchen also turns out an excellent crab cake with lots of fresh crabmeat and and almost no breading.   Maryland is famous for its blue crab.  When blue crab season begins in June, Choptank will also have lots of blue crab and an outdoor patio to enjoy it on.  Choptank is a little less laidback, more of an urbane fish shack, minus the plastic bibs,  and handiwipes.  The dining room is outfitted with dark wood floors and tables, white marble bartops, and light fixtures cloaked in burlap fish netting.  There's a large oyster bar with plenty of seats if you want to spend the evening sampling oysters and tables in the main dining room.  There's a concise, but good selection of West and East coast oysters  (My favorites were the Chesapeake Bay variety.)

One of the best things on the menu is actually the fried chicken.   The first time I had the chef's fried chicken was at Bussaco in Park Slope, Brooklyn.   There, Matthew Schaefer served it with waffles and an apple-onion butter.   Here, he serves it alongside an intriguing black pepper honey and sauteed collard greens.  Schaefer, who trained at Le Bernardin, also brought over his fancy version of crab chowder, which tastes like a creamy crab consomme bacon and chives.   Other than that, this is a new menu for the chef and it isn't just seafood.   There's a house burger, bistro steak, Polish sausage and a pretzel, and bone marrow with winter lettuces and onion marmalade. 

My favorite dish is the braised octopus with paprika and potatoes.   It's not easy to make good octopus because you often have to make sacrifices.  You either take a crispy exterior for a dry interior or vice versa, but this one manages to crispy, yet moist, tossed with a pepper confit with a nice kick.   I like the roasted wild mushrooms glossed with a warm, egg yolk and an excellent arctic char, cooked medium rare, and poised over lentils with bacon.

Address: 79 MacDougal St., nr. Houston

Phone: (212)260-0100

Cuisine: Seafood

Vibe: White-washed fish shack

Occasion: Oyster cravings, casual date,  group dinner.

Hours: Dinner, Mon-Thu 5:30p.m.-11p.m, Fri & Sat, 5:30-11:30p.m. Closed Sundays.

Don't Miss Dish: Mermaid Mary cocktail; Sauteed calamari with feta & frisee; Fried clam strips; Roasted mussels.

Average Price: Cocktails, $11Appetizers, $9; Entrees, $20; Complimentary Dessert.

Reservations: Reservations recommended.

Capsule: Back to the beach for dinner.

It's rare to find fried clam strips in Manhattan and even rarer to find some that aren't overly chewy.   So when I spotted them on the menu at the new Mermaid Oyster Bar, I ordered them and hoped for the best.  They were even better than that: Tender clam strips enrobed in a perfectly light & crispy batter.  Even the aioli that came alongside it was remarkable.

I was sad to hear that owner Danny Abrams had decided to close Smith's in the West Village and transform it into another Mermaid Inn restaurant.   Normally, I'm not one to put decor before food, but Smith's was stunning.  There was a mirrored ceiling, black leather booths, chandelier sconces, and a gorgeous back bar with gray velvet walls.   Most of the food was inconsistent and the kitchen went through a string of chefs before calling it quits.

This was quite a transformation.  Walk inside and you'll find yourself in a understated dining room with white-washed wood walls, two tops with elevated metal stools , and anchor light fixtures hanging over the bar.  This isn't really just another The Mermaid Inn.  This one offers twelve different kinds of oysters -- six from the east coast and six from the west coast.   There's a classic fish shack menu with dashes of creativity here and there: Saltine-crusted oysters on a bed of garlicky spinach, roasted mussels with harissa and aioli, and snapper ceviche.   The cocktail list has some excellent offerings, like one called the Hot & Dirty, a better man's martini spiced with tobasco sauce.  The Mermaid Mary --  tomato juice, fresh horseradish, and old bay topped off with a shrimp & cornichon stirrer -- is just as solid and perfect for when they decide to open for brunch.  I prefer the East Coast oysters to the West Coast, especially the super smooth Mermaid Straits and the salty Mystic oysters. 

As for the rest of the menu, I much prefer the appetizers to the entrees.  In fact, most of the starter dishes are great.  My favorite is the sauteed calamari creatively paired with a tangle of frisee, feta, and mushrooms.  The roasted mussels were simmering in a garlicky aioli with escarole and harissa.  I only wish they served bread to sponge up all of the aioli sauce at the bottom of the bowl. 

There were a few weak points: The snapper  ceviche was watery and the lobster bisque muddy and lacking in the lobster department.  Skip the overly dense hush puppies in favor of the old bay fries or a generous side of bright green spinach.  All of the Mermaid outposts have the same, standout lobster roll served on a bun with old bay fries.  The best entree I tried was first-rate flounder. 

There's no dessert menu, but guests all cap off the evening with a complimentary cup filled with rich, dark chocolate pudding and one of those fortune-telling fish.   I miss the mirrored ceilings, but I love the extensive oyster selection, the cocktails, and the newly minted laidback setting.   Seeing as I put food before decor, I also like the Mermaid Oyster Bar's menu much better.

• Cuisine: Seafood
• Vibe: Nautical chic
• Occasion: Dinner at sea, cozy date, group dinner
• Don't Miss: Maine mussels with cabbage and bacon, clam chowder, butterscotch pudding
• Price: Appetizers, $12; entrees, $24; dessert, $8
• Reservations: Recommended
• Phone: (212) 989-6410
• Location: 290 Hudson St., at Spring St.

Do you ever just go out and eat?" a friend asked me at dinner a few months ago. "Rarely," I answered before returning to the menu. But a lot of people do. There are plenty of people who don't need to know who the chef is before making a reservation.

Can you picture someone walking into their local diner and demanding to see the chef's résumé?

There's no denying food gets much more attention than it used to. Think about it: food TV, food bloggers, food porn and celebrity chefs with cooking shows. I thought it might be interesting to just "go out to dinner" at Harbour, a new restaurant that has opened west of SoHo. That meant no Googling the chef. No peeking at the menu on the Internet. No glancing online at photos of the restaurant's interior. It was torture. I don't even remember what life was like before they put menus online and PR firms began sending press kits.

The only thing I knew about Harbour was the address - 290 Hudson St., near Spring St. - just a few blocks north of the Holland Tunnel. I walked past two outdoor parking lots in a relatively unsettled part of town, and what did I find? A yacht. The walls are high gloss, wood panels lined with portholes. The creamy leather banquettes are circular and set with glitzy stemware and seashell-shaped candle holders. The sign on the bathroom reads "First Class Restroom." It could easily seem gimmicky, but it doesn't. It's not exactly dinner on the high seas, but it's an admirable facsimile.

In fact, Harbour is a restaurant on a mission. The menu offers only sustainable seafood. The chef, Joe Isidori, isn't in-your-face about it. He simply doesn't put any unsustainable options on the menu - no Chilean sea bass, no cod, no farmed Atlantic salmon and no bluefin tuna. Instead, there's sea scallops with cauliflower and raisins, and Beau Soleil oysters with Meyer lemon and parsley.

There's a terrifically smoky clam chowder with bacon, Worcestershire sauce and cherry tomatoes confit. The menu's not just ocean-friendly, it's also affordable. The clam chowder's $9, entrées hover around $25, and there's a wine list with 20 bottles under $20. I had a great $18 bottle of Gruner Veltliner, one of the many wines they offer with a screw-top for conservation reasons.

By far, the best deal and dish at Harbour is an entrée of Maine mussels. It has everything going for it: a fragrant mountain of fresh mussels, lardon, Brussels sprout leaves, crispy slivers of garlic, Korean pepper and homemade kimchee.

But there's a few too many highs and lows here. The lobster salad was sorely overdressed in ginger mayonnaise and lobster oil. And the most expensive dish on the menu - a $39 entrée of butter-poached lobster - was washed out by butter and a smoked-paprika foam.

I do have one question. What's with all the foam? The yuzu foam suppressing the broiled char with salmon roe. The frothy yellow curry dominating an entrée of pan-roasted hake. There was one successful exception - a wonderful sea scallop ceviche with sea urchin, Thai mignonette and an airy lime emulsion.

As for dessert: Skip a chalky Black Forest chocolate cake, layered with a gummy sour cherry gelée. Instead, try the butterscotch pudding topped with addictive, cream cheese-stuffed brown sugar cookies.