I have a lot to comment on about the food and drinks at Penny, but the TLDR is that it was all mostly pretty great, though pricey.
-Sesame brioche + butter: soft, warm, fluffy, sesame-flecked slices of heaven that we enjoyed as an appetizer as that's when it came out. I wish we still had some left when the seafood rice came out later in the meal in order to sop up the delicious remaining sauce. The accompanying salted butter was great as well and melted right into the bread.
-Seafood broken rice: An indulgent, peppery dish of seafood pieces - including lobster, I think - and soft rice. The sauce was something like a beurre blanc and was a great pairing for seafood, of course. My gripe was that there could've been more seafood or even just more rice because we had extra sauce at the end. It was so good (and pricey) that I just loaded it onto my fork.
-Ice box (oysters, countnecks, shrimp, mussels, crudo): Everything was good, but I might've been slightly disappointed in this revered-by-the-entire-internet $42 offering if it hadn't been for the totally mind-blowing shrimp cocktail. I don't typically feel too strongly about shrimp, but I absolutely will extoll these: they were tender, ice cold, and very flavorful. We actually ordered the separate shrimp cocktail on top of the shrimp served with the ice box because you only get two, which just wouldn't have been enough.
-Halibut and kohlrabi: The fish was nicely prepared and tender; the dish was tangy, crunchy, and buttery. Not a standout dish here, but it helps to fill you up, although the portion could've been bigger.
-Ice cream sando: this is an actual ice cream sandwich in that it is made with actual brioche. The flavors apparently used to be strawberry and balsamic, but it's now changed to carrot cake. It reminded me of orange marmalade and was also on the salty side. Overall, I thought it was good, but not revelatory.
I've heard that this is as much of a wine bar as it is a seafood establishment, but to me it felt that the focus was more on the food side. So many restaurants in the city have extensive wine lists nowadays that it's easy to take it for granted, but it helps that the drinks are almost entirely wine-focused here, as Penny doesn't serve liquor. We settled on their lone bottle from Slovenia, a Chardonnay. It was minerally and also a bit buttery in the way Chardonnay just is, even though it was probably unoaked. We enjoyed it a lot.
Service was chill; you interact with a lot of different staff doing their thing as all of the seating is bar seating. read more