How to Order at the New 400-Seat Italian Japanese Import From London

Restaurants like Grand Brasserie and Din Tai Fung have recently appeared boasting over 400 seats, going way beyond what was once considered a manageable scale. The idea is that more money can be made if customers are herded in like cattle. Of course, the sense of intimacy that a restaurant seating 60 or so possesses is lost, but doesn’t a colosseum-size restaurant also represent a certain level of enjoyable spectacle?

The latest behemoth restaurant to open is Aqua, at 920 Broadway, near 20th Street in Flatiron, owned by David Yeo, who also owns Hutong. Until recently it was a furniture store. Now, shaped like a mallet, the main room sprawls around an oval bar, surmounted by massive rope sculptures that make it look like a ship without sails. A long wing with a 70-foot sushi bar shoots off perpendicularly toward a separate entrance on 21st Street.

The tables are comfortable, displayed in every nook, cranny, and big open area as far as the eye can see. The number of light fixture types is dizzying, yet the place is still dark. There’s also a mezzanine not yet open. Aqua is actually a branch of a London restaurant, and it mounts two separate menus, one devoted to Italian food (“Aqua Roma”), the other to Japanese (“Aqua Kyoto”).

The Japanese and Italian menus are separate; there’s almost no fusion going on. Our waitress tried to talk us through the ordering process by suggesting we get things from both menus, but warning that we would have no control over when the dishes arrived — making it impossible to enjoy a sequential meal of one cuisine and then the other. This feature can be annoying when too many dishes that don’t go together arrive at once — such as our rock shrimp tempura (Japanese) and fried calamari (Italian), which set down at precisely the same time, both thickly breaded so it was hard to tell them apart.

With around 70 dishes between them, not counting desserts, the dual menus keep sections brief, running between two and five dishes per category. On the Italian side, there are starters, appetizers, crudo, pizzas, pastas & risottos, entrées, and sides. From the Japanese kitchen, it’s appetizers, tempuras, maki, sashimi & sushi, Crystal Sushi, signature platters, entrées & robatas, rice & noodles.

Several dishes stand out for their novelty. One is Crystal Sushi, invented in Hong Kong at Shiro, one of the chain’s restaurants. It swaddles a core of raw fish with translucent flavored jelly instead of nori. In one of three options (two pieces for $22), the roll contains scallop wrapped with gelatin kimchi, with caviar and a swatch of gold leaf for garnish. It’s more visually striking than flavorful.

Lobster bisque pizza is definitely worth trying, with a crust perhaps too puffy and yeasty, but with generous servings of lobster tail and claw meat. The underlying sauce didn’t really qualify as a bisque, but provided a nice backdrop. Four can share this pizza ($35) as an appetizer.

Best dishes to order

Of the five Italian pastas, the mafalde with oxtail ragu ($29) was superb, the frilled noodles slippery in a thick dark sauce. The only problem was too few noodles in the rich sauce, forcing you spoon it up like thick soup when the noodles are gone.

On the Japanese menu, the maki rolls are assembled with particular skill, so the nori doesn’t unravel and the multiple ingredients don’t fall out. The futomaki ($19) comes wrapped in a layer of rice paper, and the tuna, salmon, yellowtail, and avocado make a nice tight combo, like a jazz trio.

If you demand vegetables, spinach salad ($17) will do. It’s the dish known as ohitashi on most Japanese menus — two cylinders of compressed spinach, with a lovely sesame dressing poured tableside.

The chicken thigh ($19) on the Japanese menu is also good, a pair of bulbous skewers painted with a dark sweet sauce and grilled, imparting a smoky flavor to the poultry.

Tips

Here’s the move: If you want to have some control over your sequence of dishes, place a small order and then another small order later on. This is not really a pizza parlor, nor is it a sushi bar — the quality is good, but the selection is limited in both cases, so skip those categories. Finally, consider it as a good place for drinks and snacks. Aqua is big enough, you can probably get in without a reservation most times.

Aqua New York

902 Broadway, New York, New York 10010 Visit Website