Penny

What Critical Recognition Reveals About a Raw Bar Done Right

New York's raw bar tradition runs long and, in many rooms, formulaic: towers of ice, predictable shellfish platters, wine lists assembled as afterthoughts. The genre rewards spectacle over execution, which makes the critical response to Penny worth paying attention to. Penny was named to Esquire's Leading New Restaurants list at number 23 in 2024 and earned placement in Opinionated About Dining's Casual North America rankings for 2025. Those two citations together say something specific: this is a room that serious diners and food writers treat as a reference point for the category.

The East Village has its own logic as a location. It sits outside the Midtown belt where Le Bernardin and Per Se anchor New York's formal fine-dining seafood tier, and it functions instead as a neighborhood of repeat locals and deliberate visitors who arrive knowing what they want. Penny fits that register: no reservations for most seats, a walk-in policy that favors early arrivals, and a price point at the upper end of casual without crossing into ceremony.

The Counter as Format, Not Gimmick

Penny is all bar seating. Two marble counters run the length of the slim, light-filled second-floor space, parallel to mounds of ice stacked with Champagne bottles and crisp whites. There is nowhere for the kitchen to retreat: the cooks work directly in front of diners, shucking, slicing, and assembling each order in real time. The format strips away the typical distance between preparation and plate, and it sets an accountability that the food has to meet.

Within New York's current seafood counter scene, the format places Penny in a narrower category than the broader fine-dining field. It does not operate on the same axis as Masa, Atomix, or Eleven Madison Park, where tasting menus and ceremony define the experience. The relevant comparison is closer to the raw bar counters at serious wine-focused restaurants: rooms where sourcing, seasoning, and list-building carry as much weight as technique. Across America, that format has been refined at places like Providence in Los Angeles and Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg, though those operate in more formal registers. Penny runs leaner and more deliberately casual.

What Ends Up on the Ice

The menu centers on what Pinsky calls the Ice Box: a presentation of oysters, razor clams, mussels escabeche, scallop crudo, and similar items displayed on pebble ice, with each component shucked or assembled to order. Specials rotate and have included stuffed squid with Swiss chard and harissa-adjacent sauce, Dover sole finished with bone marrow, and a live Maine lobster poached to order and served with brown butter. Sesame brioche topped with Cantabrian anchovies and a tuna carpaccio with Manzanilla olives and cipollini onions appear as signature starters.

The kitchen's restraint is the main critical talking point. Multiple reviewers have noted that Pinsky works with minimal equipment, a binchotan grill among them, and the results land not through complexity but through sourcing and precision. One review describes shrimp cooked so cleanly it recalibrates expectations for the ingredient. Razor clams arrive dressed with pickled vegetables. Wax beans are finished with katsuobushi. The vocabulary is global but the approach is disciplined: each addition has to justify itself against a primary ingredient that is already good.

Seafood spans both coasts and arrives largely from small-scale purveyors on a daily basis, with seasonality driving what appears on the counter. That sourcing ethos aligns Penny with the broader shift in American seafood restaurants toward transparency about supply chains, a shift visible at destination restaurants from Lazy Bear in San Francisco to Alinea in Chicago, though the expression at Penny is deliberately less theatrical.

A Wine List That Takes the Food Seriously

A 6,000-bottle inventory is substantial by any measure, and at Penny the list is structurally French-focused with depth in Burgundy, Champagne, Loire, and Rhône, alongside meaningful Italian coverage. Wine Director Ellis Srubas-Giammanco and sommeliers Michael Warner and Justin Gomez manage a cellar that spans current releases and older vintages alongside producers from both established and emerging appellations. Corkage is set at $55 for those bringing their own bottles.

The by-the-glass selection is edited rather than exhaustive, which means the full list rewards those who ask for it specifically. For a raw seafood counter, the depth of the French cellar matters: the pairing logic between Champagne, Loire whites, and raw shellfish is well-established, and Penny's list is built to make that connection direct. In that respect, the wine program positions the restaurant closer to the approach of European seafood-wine rooms than to the broader New York casual seafood category. For comparison, the wine-first seriousness at Claud, the bistro below, carries upstairs without the formality.

How the Room Operates in Practice

A small number of reservations are available at Penny, but the majority of seats are held for walk-ins. Arrive shortly before doors open to secure a spot without a reservation. The all-counter format means there is no conventional table service, and the pace is set by the bar rather than by a kitchen sending timed courses.

The price tier is $$$, with a typical meal at about $150 per person before beverages. For the format, that positions Penny above the neighborhood casual end and below the formal tasting-menu tier occupied by The French Laundry or Alain Ducasse at Louis XV. It is a dinner-only operation, with Joshua Pinsky in the kitchen and Amanda Guevara managing the floor.

For anyone assembling a broader East Village or Lower Manhattan evening, the stacked format of Claud below and Penny above means the building functions as a self-contained dining destination. For reference points further afield in the American seafood canon, Emeril's in New Orleans and 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana in Hong Kong represent different national traditions in the broader seafood-focused fine dining category.

Know Before You Go

• Address: 90 E 10th St, 1st Floor (second-floor room), New York, NY 10003
• Cuisine: Seafood, Raw Bar
• Price tier: $$$ (cuisine and wine)
• Reservations: Limited; majority of seats are walk-in only, arrive early before opening
• Meals served: Dinner only
• Wine list: 6,000 bottles; Burgundy, Champagne, Loire, Rhône, France, Italy; corkage $55
• Awards: Opinionated About Dining Casual North America (2025); Esquire Leading New Restaurants #23 (2024)
6 (223 reviews)
• Seating format: All counter / bar seating
• Key staff: Chef Joshua Pinsky; Wine Director Ellis Srubas-Giammanco; GM Amanda Guevara; Owners Chase Sinzer and Joshua Pinsky