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Salmon is useless to restaurant critics. It’s a stolid, predictable fish that chefs tend to prepare in stolid, predictable ways. So leave it to Jeffrey Chodorow, the tireless impresario of Chinese food (China Grill), Cuban food (Asia de Cuba), Brazilian food (the defunct Caviar and Banana), and, most recently, Kobe beef (Kobe Club), to imbue this tired, overstretched fish with a dose of big-city glamour. The name of his newest restaurant is Wild Salmon, and the venue is Chodorow’s grandest stage of all, a majestic glass-and-metal structure which once housed an insurance company. Wild Salmon is not a franchise, however, and to implement his particular vision, Chodorow has brought in Charles Ramseyer, a noted seafood chef from that great salmon mecca, Seattle, Washington. Ramseyer makes a point of flying in different varieties of fresh wild salmon, daily, from the Pacific Northwest. The tall, glass-and-metal room appears much as it did during the previous Chodorow productions, only the overweening smell of truffle oil has disappeared, and the ceiling has been hung with glowing, lattice-covered lanterns, and hundreds of curious, sperm-shaped sculptures, which appear to bound along under the roof of the restaurant, like so many salmon on a great spawn. Such theatrics are tame by Chodorow’s standards, and the restaurant’s menu, which covers a single large page, is relatively tame too. There are only eight kinds of sauce offered with your salmon, and if you avoid most of them, along with many of the superfluous non-seafood items, it’s possible to enjoy that rare thing in the hectic Chodorow universe: a fairly good, fairly relaxed meal. — Adam Platt

The brunch specialty: eggs Benedict with house-smoked sockeye, king, and coho, over latkes.

Mt. St. Helens Seafood Platter, house-smoked salmon platter, sand dab or sablefish, apple upside-down cake.

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Adam Platt's Full Review (5/28/07)
• Gael Greene's Full Review (4/16/07)