Who Ordered All the Turbot?

This big flat fish is everywhere.

- TAMMIE TECLEMARIAM

MAY I?” asked our server as she drew a knife down the spine of my dinner. I was at Foul Witch (15 Ave. A, nr. E. 2nd St.; foulwitchnyc.com), the East Village wine bar that opened earlier this year, and a gleaming platter of whole turbot had just arrived at the table. It was placed on a small trivet, sloping the dish slightly so that a sauce of vin jaune pooled to one side. “Because it’s such a rich fish,” she continued, “the juices will constantly collect—you’ll want to baste it as you go along.” She then glazed the otherwise unadorned seafood with additional drippings and began to delicately carve off the fillets. “When you’re ready, we’ll flip the fish over and go to the other side.”

The biggest surprise was not the price, which at $135 was reasonable, I guess, for a “large format” dish designed to serve multiple people at once. Nor was it the fact that this elegant, agreeable tableside presentation was happening inside a downtown establishment run by the people behind the Roberta’s pizza empire. The real detail I couldn’t stop thinking about after the meal was that I’d been able to order turbot at all—an ingredient that, even a decade ago, was practically unseen on New York City menus.