Ed's Chowder House

You could consider Ed Brown a scholarly seafood chef—the eighty one owner has authored a book called “The Modern Seafood Cook” and helped update the fish section in the latest edition of “The Joy of Cooking.” Now, restaurant man Jeffrey Chodorow has tasked Brown with rebooting the former Center Cut steak house into a not-too-upscale seafood shack and chowder parlor. (Note: This restaurant is no relation to Ed’s Lobster Bar.) The menu—bold and extensive—includes the requisite raw bar (little neck clams, Atlantic oysters), which leads to three types of chowder (New England, Manhattan and “Ed’s loaded”). “We’re representing chowder all the way up the Eastern Seaboard, from Baltimore to Maine,” says Brown. His trademark “loaded” has “bits of lobster, shrimp and crab in every bite.”

Lobster, fluke, Chatham cod and whole porgy dot the entrée menu—sub-titled “simply” as a sort of mission statement for Brown’s ingredient-driven cooking. At the more casual chowder bar (serving food until midnight), many of the small plates on the house menu remain, supplementing pub grub like fish n’ chips, calamari and fried oysters. Do not confuse the lobster crumble for dessert: The hearty dish is lobster meat bound with lobster sauce, topped with broken oyster crackers, cheese and plenty of butter.

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