The John Dory Oyster Bar

Sam Sifton has written the most mouthwatering restaurant review I can ever remember reading. It is made even more tantalizing by the fact that the seafood dishes he describes are available to a semivegetarian like myself, and the prices are not outrageous.

Here’s a taste of what he has to say about April Bloomfield’s work for the John Dory Oyster Bar.

Ms. Bloomfield is cooking well enough to hold her own against any seafood-centric kitchen in the city.

Her food can be astonishing. Take a dish the menu tartly calls chorizo stuffed squid with smoked tomato. (There was a similar item on the menu of the old John Dory.) Ms. Bloomfield buys whole Rhode Island squid and stuffs it with paella rice she cooks with chorizo, red pepper, onion and saffron. For vinaigrette she smokes her own tomatoes and tosses them with sherry vinegar, salt, olive oil and a bit of palm sugar. A cook sears the squid just long enough to heat the rice through and give its body a faint crust, then places it on a soft bed of tiny white beans cooked in crème fraîche, with a cloak of those smoked tomatoes and a hat of cilantro. It costs $15. It is among the best things you can eat in New York City. (In the $4-and-under division, even counting some Chinatown dumplings, it would be difficult to top Ms. Bloomfield’s toast slathered in a paste of anchovies, parsley and olive oil.)