Seamus Mullen’s health troubles have gotten a lot of press lately, but his cooking at Suba, his newly opened “modern Spanish” restaurant on Ludlow Street, hasn’t gotten nearly enough. Tonight, for example, Mullen is serving mariscos y verduras (shellfish and green vegetables), an updated Basque summer standard. “With the weather in the nineties, I wanted to do something that was fresh and light, but that also had a very, very deep flavor,” Mullen says. “I like this, too, because basically everything in it is in season and locally sourced, but it’s totally true to Spanish cooking – except for the Meyer-lemon vinaigrette. But that goes so well with it.” A diver scallop, some littleneck clams, rock shrimp, and cockles are steamed in Txakoli wine, and the resulting liquid is mixed with a broth of fish stock and fresh herbs, and used to quickly cook sugar snap peas, snow peas, and cranberry beans. The dish is topped with some borage flowers and served as a first course for $15. Mullen suggests drinking the Txakoli, an effervescent spirit, with it.

Related: Suba’s Seamus Mullen Goes Through Something Even Worse Than an Opening

You can’t get much of a clambake going at Brighton Beach, which is about as close as we at Grub Street get to the ocean these days. But we still pine for the crude pleasures of a summer ritual that has almost no presence in the daily life of New York. Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune felt more or less the same way, and so came up with tonight’s special, a dish of steamed Manila clams, merguez sausage, and corn (for $23) meant to summon the experience, if not the setting. “I think it’s like a clambake,” she says, “just not in a pit of sand in the ground. But it has all the other elements, plus ones you wouldn’t normally find, like smoked paprika, cilantro, piquillo peppers.” But why Manila clams? That doesn’t seem especially traditional. “It isn’t,” Hamilton says. “But we love their saltiness, and they are the perfect size to open at just the right time it takes for the merguez to cook.”

Frogs’ legs tend to be associated with the French and Vietnamese, but according to Craig Hopson, the chef de cuisine at Picholine, the frogs in Florida have the imported ones beaten on all counts. “They’re a lot bigger and cleaner,” he says, and tonight, he’ll be serving them (for $19) as a special at the restaurant. “Frogs’ legs don’t have much flavor on their own,” Hopson tells us, so he ups the ante by filling them with a mixture of ground frogs’ legs, bacon, and foie gras, leaving a small bone protruding to hold them with, and frying them up in tempura batter as crispy frog lollipops. The dish is served with celery kimchee, considerably cooled down from the fiery Korean kind, and a spiced aïoli. But it’s the legs themselves that really jump off the plate.

Alaska’s Copper River is home to some of the most prized wild salmon, but they only come our way for a few brief weeks. The one being served (for $32) tonight at Lure Fishbar couldn’t be more basic. Chef Josh Capon grills the fish very simply, and then plates it with plump, earthy morels, crispy peas, and asparagus. “Copper River salmon is truly the king of all salmon,” says Capon. “They are the oldest wild-salmon species caught today. And due to their long swim upriver, they have a very high fat content, because they store a lot of fat to make the trip. It has a much sweeter flesh that almost melts when it cooked.” Which is one reason Capon barely cooks it, getting out of the way as much as possible so as to let its extraordinary flavor come through.

Chef Marco Canora’s menu at Insieme is divided between modern dishes like uni risotto and traditional ones like spinach lasagne. But tonight’s special, black-olive fettuccine with duck ragù, falls somewhere between the two sides. “I love this as a take on a really rustic dish, but reworked,” Canora says. “The acidity of red wine goes with the richness of the duck, and both are complemented by the brininess of the olives.” The dish is topped with fiore de Sardo cheese, which Canora says he likes for its smokiness. If we were ordering it, we would start off with a cold, clean crudi appetizer, before taking on its deep, salty flavors. ($16 for an appetizer portion, $26 for entrée.)

We’re coming into prime-time soft-shell-crab season, and we're about to leave ramps behind us. So tonight’s special at European Union, sautéed soft-shell crabs with pickled ramps ($16), is something not to miss. The crabs coming up from Maryland are bigger and fatter than the ones seen earlier in the season, one reason chef Akhtar Nawab put the dish on the menu. Says Nawab, “The soft-shells are so nice right now, meaty, sweet, and really soft. They’re alive when we get them. The pickled ramps really cut the richness and tenderness of the crab with a nice garlicky and crunchy bite.” Nawab freely offers that he didn’t invent the idea of pairing ramps with crabs, but EU makes the dish their own by also adding pickled red onions, baby leeks, and (for a trace of sweetness) cipollini onions braised in red wine and honey. Be warned, though — even the meatiest soft-shell crab isn’t going to sate you. Be prepared to order a couple, and think twice about sharing them. In another couple of weeks the dish will be a memory.

The evils of foie gras production are old news, but somehow, the stuff keeps finding its way to our tables. Possibly because it’s so freaking good. David Coleman, chef de cuisine at Tocqueville, is featuring the controversial delicacy on his menu tonight, simply seared and served with apricots glazed with sherry caramel, alongside ramps and chocolate-mint purée. “The dish is inspired by the first spring ingredients finally available — ramps from the Greenmarket and also the first apricots from California, which have a short season from May to July.” Sure, David. The dish is inspired by spring produce, not the voluptuously buttery, sweet taste of what gastronomes like Charles Gerard have called “the supreme fruit of gastronomy.” We don’t believe you, but we will happily eat it anyway.

Josh DeChellis’s Japanese-inspired cooking at Sumile Sushi is especially attuned to seasonality. Just look at tonight’s special, spring-vegetable sushi. Says DeChellis, “Spring’s first vegetables are so precious — just like the most prized fish of the sea — and deserve an equally simple preparation to highlight their annual arrival and delicate flavors.” Tonight’s vegetables include fresh wasabi peas, glazed spring onions, young Japanese peppers, steamed ramps, wild asparagus, enoki, water spinach and sesame, and daikon sprout “kimchee.” The special will change as it reappears from time to time throughout the spring, with different vegetables making guest appearances.

The East Village’s Bär-Bo-Ne is known mostly for its regional wines, but the food has been getting consistently more interesting since former chef John Baron departed and was replaced by the owner, Alberto Ibrahimi. The latter incorporates pointed, strong flavors into light, understated dishes such as tonight’s special of veal short ribs braised in white wine, served over parsnip purée with celery leaves ($20). “You see beef short ribs all the time,” Ibrahimi says. “But spring is here and veal is softer and lighter.” The celery leaves give some needed texture and bitterness to the soft sweetness of the meat and parsnips; Ibrahimi suggests pairing the dish with a $12 quartino of Benuara, a blend of red Nero d’Avola and Syrah grapes that he says is “rustic but elegant, like the ribs.”

At Amalia tonight, chef Ivy Stark has reeled in a fish seldom seen in New York dining circles – which is too bad, because golden tilefish is one of our favorites. Meaty, dense, and full of oily goodness, it’s similar to mackerel in taste, but much, much bigger, typically weighing about twenty pounds. Since it can’t be done whole, Stark serves a pan-seared, skin-on filet of the fleshy creature, with a very springlike purée of fava beans and pineapple-mint leaves (the latter being one of the latest designer hybrid herbs on the market). “It’s really very Egyptian,” Stark says. “I was looking through my cookbooks, and I came across it and decided it would be perfect.” The dish is also served with an Iranian-style salad of raw salted rhubarb with whole mint leaves, spring chives, lime, and garlic. “I saw people eating raw rhubarb on the street in Iran,” Stark says, “and the salt completely takes away the sourness and bitterness … I love not having to cook it. It’s so much more refreshing this way.”