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The Otter and Brass are what happen when good chefs hide in bad rooms.

- BY MATTHEW SCHNEIER

THE OTTER BURROWS into habitats called holts, tunneling imperceptibly into the landscape to make its home. So, it seems, does the Otter, which opened this past September in the Manner hotel. It is as holtish a restaurant as you're likely to find. Tucked off the lobby, this Otter is all but invisible from the outside and protected from things like sunlight. Nevertheless, danger lurks: Obscurity is the natural predator of the restaurant, which survives by dispersing its charms to lure in curious passersby.

The Otter, like the otter, prefers fish. Though no hotel restaurant can go without a steak and a burger, this one opened at the end of a long year of ascendant seafood and designer raw bars. Whether the pescatarian brief came from hotel management or Alex Stupak of the Empellón restaurants, the latest in a line of established, well-regarded chefs offering their services as hired guns, I couldn't say. Either way, a combination of Stupak’s usual cooking interests (Mexican, with nods to the also-trendy Basque) and New England chowderism works a treat.