Restaurant reviewers pride themselves on not seeing the world in black and white, but an eight-count box of crayons would cover the shades most of them pick up on. Remember, these are folks so fixated on the palate that they reflexively dismiss “palette” as a typo, even when the homonym’s used correctly.

Sure, critics encounter swirls of color on cheffy plates zigzagged with reductions and punctuated by foams, and revel in the sight of vivid vegetable leaves and lustrous fruit flesh in season. Yet the range of hues that signal it’s time to find a fork isn’t half as vast as the spectrums of flavors, aromas, or memories which emerge from cooking.

In short, color is way down a food writer’s checklist.

But occasionally, a restaurant forces the issue by attaching itself to a color with adhesive power worthy of a late-night TV commercial. At Gemma Fish + Oyster, the determinedly upscale San Marco restaurant opened in December 2023 by Mike and Brittany Cooney, that color is pink.

Pink is the color of the neon wall art commanding customers to “shuck it.” Pink is the color of its cocktails, including a margarita blushing with hibiscus ($8) and a vodka punch stained by strawberries ($8). Pink, most alarmingly, is the color of a roasted beet salad described on the menu as a medley of carrots, benne seeds, walnuts, and blue cheese.

I can picture those ingredients in combination and bet you can too—which is why I suspect you’ll understand my signaling a server when something resembling a yogurt parfait landed on my table. At the center of the shallow bowl was a seeping dollop of penicillin-pink dairy, encircled by a slender band of chopped beets and bulky walnut pieces. 

Silly me for thinking that blue cheese would be blue at Gemma, where it’s instead aerated and dyed with beet juice until it aligns with the dining room’s visual aesthetic.

Gemma, the seafood-themed sequel to the turf-centric Ember & Iron in Saint Johns, is far from an anarchic space. In fact, it’s so orderly from an operations standpoint that staffers trade efficiency-minded phrases such as “I have you plated up” and “You can grab and go” within earshot of customers. But rules of the natural world apparently don’t apply to the kitchen, which prefers everything—salads included—pink and sweet.

What’s odd about Gemma’s emphasis on manipulation is “pink” and “sweet” describe Mayport shrimp perfectly. But you get the sense that homegrown shellfish doesn’t have sufficient razzle-dazzle for this bilevel restaurant, where light fixtures of various shapes and sizes are theatrically arranged, and the bathroom walls are tiled in zebra print. There is shrimp on Gemma’s menu, but it’s not always identified by name: A deep-fried version is listed as “seafood tempura.”

When I asked a bartender to elaborate on the dish, it seemed like he hadn’t fielded the question too frequently. After all, Gemma is a restaurant where style is prized so highly above substance that when diners at a table near mine asked their server to capture them on video, he had ideas for what would look best on Instagram Reels.

To be fair, I’m not a member of the target demographic for Gemma, a point driven home when I ordered a martini on one of my two visits to the restaurant. “Dry and dirty!” the bartender pronounced. After I explained I preferred the drink wet and clean, he had to leave the bar to find a bottle of vermouth.

So, why bother with Gemma at all? Because Ember & Iron is so popular, because the buzz around Gemma’s opening was cicada-loud, and because when a restaurant charges $18 for cheddar shreds flecked with little lobster bits (Gemma stands an airy rice cracker in the mix and calls it lobster pimento cheese), it’s worth looking into what the place has to offer.

One of the main offerings is oysters, with half a dozen varieties from across the continent available. The oysters I ordered were fresh and cold, but erratically shucked, meaning the meat’s marred sporadically by shell shrapnel. Surprisingly for a restaurant so focused on appearance, the oyster presentation is exactly what you’d find at any decent beachfront bar: An iced metal tray furnished with ramekins of hot sauce, horseradish, and cocktail sauce, plus lemon wages and packaged Lance saltines.

Oysters are also sold roasted and fried alongside trendy-sounding appetizers such as chili crisp pork belly, and veteran starters such as crab-and-artichoke dip. My serving of grilled octopus, sliced and tossed with shelled mussels in a white wine sauce, was salty and tough, but I had better luck with grilled shrimp, soaked in a fittingly fatty ‘nduja butter inflamed by the featured sausage’s Calabrian chiles.

The entrée selection is similarly wide-ranging, with all the major American proteins represented. Honestly, I’m not sure how many Gemma patrons get that deep into the menu, since rooftop seating for many diners is synonymous with “drinks and snacks.” But that’s where I found my favorite of Gemma’s dishes: A tomatillo-bright pozole with fish, mussels, shrimp, and cubed avocado bedded in hominy that retained its strong corn character.

Pozole is an outlier on Gemma’s menu. It may well have made the cut because its composition allows for a little of this and a little of that, depending on the kitchen’s current inventory. In this context, though, there’s something appealing about functionality.

Of course, Gemma doesn’t want its guests to dwell on real-life concerns. The soup’s made more festive by a garnish of sliced radishes, edged in rich magenta.

---

Gemma Fish + Oyster, 2039 Hendricks Ave., Jacksonville, (904) 593-7030, gemmafishandoyster.com