New York’s Claud Crew Opens Penny, A Walk-In Seafood Bar Upstairs

Spontaneity? Do you remember what that was like, when you decided at 5 p.m. where you wanted to go eat at 6 p.m.? These days, having dinner at the “it place” in many cities can involve wrangling an expensive membership, guaranteeing a minimum on a VIP reservations app or waking up early to feverishly check availability 30 days before the evening you want to visit.

So maybe the most refreshing and chill part about New York’s new Penny, the East Village raw bar and seafood counter from the formidable Claud team, is that the majority of its 31 seats are held for walk-ins. The tricky part, of course, is that Joshua Pinsky and Chase Sinzer’s Claud is a highly acclaimed and popular wine bar, so there might be a wait at this new seafood spot directly upstairs. But even Claud itself can be a walk-in wonderland. One of our best recent meals in New York was when we came to Claud sans reservation and enjoyed a foie gras terrine, peekytoe crab bread and a truly oversized slice of chocolate cake at the restaurant’s front rail.

At Penny, which is currently open from 5 p.m to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, Pinsky and Sinzer are going for a casually elegant experience. Penny has a snack-forward menu with shrimp cocktail, dressed razor clams and tuna carpaccio. For those who want a more-over-the-top meal, there are “ice boxes,” which are Penny’s version of seafood towers (with options like oysters, clams, mussels and scallop crudo) and served in blue aluminum boxes. Add a caviar beggar’s purse or two if you spontaneously feel like balling out on a Tuesday.

There are also cooked seafood dishes (like an oyster pan roast, cod + clams and dover sole + bone marrow), wines by the glass that start at $12 and Suntory Premium Malt’s on-draft. And if you insist on trying to make a reservation, there are limited seats (primarily for groups of three or four) that are released a week in advance.

Pinsky and Sinzer (both Momofuku Ko alums) are, of course, fine-dining veterans who have decided to serve top-tier food and wine in a more relaxed situation than the elite establishments where they previously worked. (Sinzer was also wine director for Brooklyn Fare). It’s a model that many have taken and that many more want to emulate. One superstar chef, who ran a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Europe and is working on a decidedly more casual spot in Los Angeles, has told us more than once that wine bars like Claud have given him ideas during R&D.

Anyway, anybody who remembers how the difficulty of getting a Momofuku Ko reservation 15 years ago resembled the challenges of trying to buy Radiohead tickets (a lot of the same people definitely tried to do both back in the day) might appreciate the idea of these two specific operators creating a space that intentionally wants to be a walk-in destination. Wishing a lot of you luck as you climb the stairs.