Danny Garcia and Jamal James Kent walked through the arched corridors underneath 42nd Street and turned at the arrow pointing toward Grand Central Oyster Bar, a restaurant that opened three weeks after the iconic train station in 1913. Sitting at a low-slung, Formica-topped counter and slurping down oysters, Kent pitched the young chef on leading Saga Hospitality Group’s forthcoming seafood restaurant.
It was spring 2022. Kent had secured a lease at 360 Park Avenue, and Garcia had recently returned to New York after a stint in Hong Kong. “Jamal always said, ‘We’re gonna work together again. Our story’s not over,’” recalls Garcia, who first worked for Kent at Eleven Madison Park. “Jamal told me, ‘I would love to base the project off of this,’ with ‘this’ being Grand Central Oyster Bar.”
The chefs and sons of New York City had a deep affinity for the seafood stalwart. Garcia frequented the restaurant with his architect father, who would point out the space’s finer design details. Kent’s grandmother Sue went on a first date with the legendary jazz musician, and her future husband, Charles Mingus at Grand Central Oyster Bar. The interior plan for 360 Park Avenue, Kent told me last March, was inspired by Sue and her home in Sag Harbor.
That restaurant, Time and Tide, opened last week—and almost four months after Garcia eulogized Kent at a standing room-only service at St. Bartholomew’s Church. Kent died suddenly on June 15, at the age of 45, leaving behind his wife Kelly, two children Avery and Gavin, and a restaurant community in mourning.
Danny Garcia and Renata Ameni
Evan Sung
Despite their grief, Kelly says, “Nobody skipped a beat.” Saga Hospitality Group became Kent Hospitality Group and Kelly a newly minted restaurateur. She and the leadership team installed Charlie Mitchell as executive chef of Saga. Jassimran Singh officially took over Crown Shy. Mitchell, Singh, Garcia, and Harrison Ginsberg, who runs Overstory, all became partners in the business, as did group pastry chef Renata Ameni, who will soon open Birdee Bakery at the Refinery at Domino. “Jamal was writing the blueprint for years, setting us all up for success and putting people he trusted in position,” Garcia says.
Time and Tide is a Mingus song. It also waits for no man. The restaurant would open on schedule and with fanfare.
At the launch party, hosted on one of those perfect Northeastern fall nights, a photographer’s flash popped at the entrance and Champagne bubbled in glasses. Guests piled their plates with oysters and baked clams. They chased uni lobes with mezcal shots. A D.J. spun records as Kelly Kent greeted friends at the door. “Everyone is rooting for us,” she says. “I’ve never seen this kind of support from within the hospitality industry. It’s unreal.”
The next day, all the chairs went back into place. Reservations were live, and Garcia and his team got down to the work of feeding and dazzling diners, honoring Kent, and figuring out their own place in New York City restaurants.
Time and Tide is no retro knock-off or oyster bar trope. Grand Central was an emotive starting point, but the menu owes as much of its character to another city dining tradition. “Right before Jamal passed, we really landed on looking at the restaurant through the lens of a steakhouse. But [we asked]: what would a steakhouse look like if it only served seafood?” says Garcia. The menu would also honor the simple cooking Kent remembered from dinners at Sue’s house, and meals Garcia shared with family on Fire Island. Saint Biggie Smalls, crowned in his famous Barron Claiborne portrait, watches over the kitchen.
Gold Fish
Evan Sung
The cumulative effect is New York swag coastal, with a sense of humor and mischief. A giant cheddar goldfish, in the mold of the childhood snack food, comes with a side of chived-topped bay butter. It’s a Red Lobster joke that I could not stop eating. The grand seafood plateau features five rotating selections—aged hiramasa with Tunisian olive oil; scallops with XO, braised kombu, and chile oil; a Beausoleil oyster topped with yuzu gelée; Jonah crab spiked with habanera and apple; and tuna with tomato ‘nduja and finger lime—all riding on the icy back of a table-dominating, tentacled octopus vessel. Shrimp cocktail gets dunked in habanero-laced cocktail sauce. The caviar supplement, served in a silver scallop, does not come with accoutrement. Garcia invites diners to drop the black gold onto dishes, any of them, with abandon. “Put it where you want it,” he says.
For the “small fish” section of the menu, longfin squid gets grilled over binchotan charcoal, sliced, and bathed in a black pepper mignonette and parmesan sauce good enough to spoon up after the squid is gone. The mackerel escabeche is layered with sherry, spicy ají limón chile, and meyer lemon, and its plating recalls the afternoon sun moving across the sky.
Though reluctant at first, Garcia workshopped an oyster pan roast as homage to Grand Central, which has served the dish since opening. In early fall, the chef and I sat down to eat the original, in which oysters and untoasted white bread drowned beneath a wan pink sauce. The dish had no spirit. Garcia pointed to the bowl. The sauce had broken and spilled over the rim. “I thought it’s a dish that should just stay here,” he confided. “It’s fine, but it lost its soul.”
At Time and Tide, Garcia presents a bisque-esque sauce redolent with paprika and tomato and bolstered by heavy cream. A few precious poached oysters are grouped off-center. The kitchen drizzles olive oil across the top, which cracks the surface of the sauce. Garcia breaks it on purpose. Ameni also devised puffy, fist-sized, Instagram-ready oyster crackers that are a delight to smash and scoop up the oysters and that irreverent sauce.
Before his passing, Kent was building a restaurant empire surrounded by the prodigious kitchen talent he’d amassed.
Evan Sung
Main course musts include a show stopping halibut pithivier swaddled in mushroom duxelles and golden puff pastry (if there’s any indication Ameni and her pastry team have contributed to a dish, order it). Fluke Milanese appears on the as a minimalist adult fish stick paired with a petite salad of watercress, fennel, and shiso. The swordfish, dry-aged for five to 14 days, is sliced to resemble a steak and mic-dropped on the table without any plating fanfare. The cut is carnally satisfying and a joy to eat with all four of Time and Tide sauces: au poivre, vin jaune cream, cilantro caper, and (my favorite) cashew salsa macha.
The sides lean nontraditional. There’s crispy black rice shot through with piquillo peppers, charred cabbage dosed with pungent Dijon and horseradish, sweet plantains with tahini and black lime. (If you require nostalgia, get the creamy cucumber and dill cobb.) “I want you to come in, get your fluke Milanese, grab a couple different sides, all the sauces, and then throw down,” Garcia says.
For dessert, I ordered Ameni’s banana split with vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice creams, plus crunchy peanuts, candied pineapple, Amareno cherries, a caramelized banana, and whipped cream. Damn if it didn’t shake loose memories of taking my nieces to Keens and Veniero’s, of my dad making me dessert for dinner when my mom was out of town. And as I scooped chocolate ice cream into my mouth, I couldn’t help but think of Kent the father and the banana splits he will miss.
Time and Tide should have been a crowning, crowing moment for the Kent (née Saga) Hospitality team. The restaurant would be the first major project outside of 70 Pine. Lebron James and Maverick Carter’s LRMR Ventures had announced a major investment. Garcia won Top Chef this summer. As he was celebrating the achievement in Aspen, Garcia got the call about his mentor’s death. Kent, he says, helped transform him from a young, hot-headed sous chef into a leader. Kent took credit for introducing Garcia to his wife. “We spent holidays together. We traveled together. Jamal’s kids were always joking, ‘Danny is his other child.’”
Time and Tide feels full of Kent and his absence. Down the length of the restaurant runs a light feature that recreates the sunlight from Sue Mingus’ home; during service it glows sunset orange. Photos of Kent and Garcia sit on the back of the low-slung raw bar, whose proportions subtly nod to Grand Central. “Maybe in our other restaurants, you wouldn’t see photos of any person other than Biggie, but I want you to walk into this place and feel like you’re in Jamal’s living room, like you’re dining with him,” Garcia says.
Time and Tide’s dining room
Garcia has made his imprint on the space and service too. His father donated a collection of Hiroshi Sugimoto photographs that hang throughout the restaurant in conversation with Japanese design motifs. Servers tie optional blue bandanas around their necks. When I asked about it, a woman said they wanted to emulate Garcia’s style.
What’s the balance, I asked Kelly, of preserving Kent’s legacy and evolving as a group with such a formidable stable of talent. She deadpanned, “It’s on my to-do list.”
After Charles Mingus died in 1979, Sue, that grand dame of inspiration, spent the rest of her life promoting his work. She managed the 14-piece Mingus Big Band, which continues to play his music live. In 1997, the Grammys posthumously honored Mingus with a lifetime achievement award. Two years later, his Mingus Dynasty album was inducted in the Grammys hall of fame, and in 2011, the Mingus Big Band won its own Grammy.
“This is a moment I can look to Sue,” Kelly says. “Charles was a creative artist, but Sue kept his music and legacy going. I remember she said to Jamal after they won a Grammy, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. We fooled them again.”
Time and Tide is a Mingus song. It waits for no man. It’s a parting gift from a great chef, poetic and bittersweet and also a whole lotta fun for Kent fans old and new. “Jamal left me with so much momentum. Me and Danny and all his chefs and employees, we want to keep this going,” says Kelly. “That’s the magic in this group. We’re not giving up on each other.”
Click here for more photos of Time and Tide.
