Zoli (312 Maujer St.) opened last week at Amant, a free contemporary art museum in Williamsburg, with a menu focused on fish from a fisherman.
Zoli’s head chef, Ned Baldwin, wears many toques. He has a degree in sculpture and worked as an artist before becoming a chef, making him an obvious choice to lead a restaurant at Amant.
Chef Baldwin, who owns Manhattan’s acclaimed restaurant Houseman, is also a longtime fisherman. For Zoli, he worked closely with the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, Danny Roberts, and executive sous chef, Aimee Li, to create a menu swimming with seafood and oceanic inspiration.
Zoli’s menu highlights local fish, starting with cold appetizers like pickled mackerel, oysters with smoked rhubarb mignonette, spicy oil-packed mussels, shrimp with green cocktail sauce, and razor clams with preserved lemon and horseradish.
Seafood-forward mains include reverse-butterflied crispy skin black sea bass and little neck clams with douchi butter and thai basil.
The remainder of Zoli’s menu offers items like bison strip steak with sauce Robert, smoked goat sausage, and spatchcocked roast chicken with kombu jus.
Zoli’s desserts are created by Houseman’s pastry chef Nicole Sheetz. Highlights include black garlic chocolate layer cake and taleggio cheesecake.
Mac Bryson, who is behind the cocktail program at Houseman, helms the bar program at Zoli. The wine list features low-intervention wines from Europe and North America, while cocktail options include a fermented fennel Gibson and Calvados and tonic.
Zoli is on ground floor of a former warehouse on Amant’s 21,000-square-foot, four-building campus. The restaurant’s 35-seat dining room and 18-seat bar are separated by Pierre Huyghe’s artwork, titled “Satellite,” which features three large aquariums.
Zoli’s second floor includes a 25-seat private dining room and separate kitchen that supplies the menu for the outdoor terrace bar.
Zoli is open Thursday through Sunday 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.