The New Ocean Prime Has a Hearty Tuna Tartare

During the late ’80s boom in boneless, skinless chicken—the era where pork was “the other white meat”—tuna was marketed as “the chicken of the sea.” That may have been a fair characterization of the smallest species, albacore. Bigger species are very much the buffalo of the sea: big, lumbering beasts who stomp their habitats in massive herds and offer up meaty pink flesh. The tuna tartare appetizer at the brand-new Ocean Prime relies on that meatiness, adapting a classic beef dish to aquatic environs. It works rather beautifully, with chunks of bigeye tuna neatly laid atop a fatty layer of avocado, a crunchy layer of paper-thin fried wonton and a kiddy pool of ginger ponzu sauce.