eat & drink.
Chef Chris Consentino (below); Fries With Eyes, one of the restaurant’s specialties.
the brother you never had (if your brother was a celebrity chef); you feel like you’ve known him your whole life. He’s just fun, and so is his food. “The goal is to create a lovely, honest experience. People don’t want tweezers,” he tells us. “I want it to be fun.” And it is. Plate after plate was passed familystyle. Fries With Eyes, fried smelts with tartar sauce; Not Your Grandma’s Clam Dip, an addictive updated take on a classic; Smoked Black Cod Dip, served in a robin’s-egg blue Le Creuset pot with fried saltines on the side. And for entrees, in addition to classics like cioppino and fish and chips there’s even a burger, named after Cosentino’s Grandpa Thurston. “Because every fish house needs one,” he tells us. But this one has tartar and cocktail sauce on it.
32 january/february 2024 marin living.
The showstopper came when Cosentino, who made cooking with offal (the odd bits and cuts of meat) famous, scraped out the insides of some lobster heads into a bowl of melted butter. “You had to know I was going to do one gutty thing,” he said. We dutifully slathered the rich, chive-y, lemony mixture onto a crusty slice of baguette, enjoying each bite. We never thought we’d eat again but started all over again the next morning with French press coffee and freshly baked pastries delivered to our door. You know those getaways that feel like a whole vacation rolled into one 24-hour period? Yeah, that’s Nick’s. Even the sheets smelled like magic. We took a walk in the garden and then packed up our stuff, including our new Nick’s tote bag with its printed message, “Stay a Little Longer” — and we really, really wanted to.
Gamma Nine
The goal is to create a lovely, honest experience. People don’t want tweezers.”