REVIEW | Brine

A few weeks ago, I had dinner at a catfish house in rural Georgia. Catfish isn’t the only dish at Thompson’s Cove: The menu lists shrimp, gator, frog legs, scallops, and deviled crab, but the back-up bench doesn’t extend much beyond that. Drink selection is similarly what’s now called “curated.” The only options are tea and soda, the former of which is brought to the table in a plastic pitcher with an accompanying hotel room bucket of self-serve ice.

In other words, it’s an austere enterprise. But the restaurant’s limited stock didn’t keep three different employees from stopping by our table to ask how we were doing, whether we had everything we needed, and if there was anything they could get for us.

Looking back, I think I was struck by how they phrased their questions because I’d dined the previous night at Brine, the permanent outgrowth of a pop-up raw bar launched in 2021 by Chris and Julie Cohen. The married couple in February opened the shoebox restaurant off the Hendricks Avenue strip in San Marco.  

At Brine, various front-of-house staff members also monitored my meal’s progress. When they checked in, though, they didn’t seem especially interested in the guest experience. In fact, they were so disengaged that I was twice offered a dessert menu before my entrée arrived. What was on their minds instead was how the food was faring.

How is the crudo doing? Are the oysters wonderful? Don’t you just love those mussels?

Well, yes. With one striking exception, everything I tried at Brine was darn near marvelous. But as a proudly upscale restaurant—meaning the French onion soup is built on a base of lobster broth, and slow-cooked short rib is accompanied by white rather than green asparagus—Brine is hindered by a vestigial pop-up mindset.

When the extent of a culinary operation is tin foil takeout pans, compostable bamboo plates, and a borrowed coffee shop, food is obviously paramount. That’s less true in a railcar-narrow dining room, tricked out with mood lighting and pricey service ware. In that setting, a mangled division of labor that produces long waits between courses and hit-or-miss familiarity with the wine list rankle.

To be sure, there’s a way around Brine’s shortcomings. The large parties seated on the restaurant’s attractive tented patio had either been clued into the situation or intuitively grasped that a tiny family-run joint can only do so much. They appeared to treat their time at Brine as a catered private dinner party, ordering myriad trays of pristine oysters and countless bottles of chilled Champagne. In the face of luxury, in the company of friends, Brine no doubt shines.

Brine telegraphs as much with its menu, which is prominently subtitled “Oysters Champagne Caviar.” Oysters of various provenances come and go with markets and seasons, but there are just two preparations available: Brushed with tomato-inflected béarnaise and baked, or raw.

Raw’s the way to go, even if you’re one of those eaters put off by oysters’ jellified jiggle or supposedly slimy countenance. In fact, if you’re an oyster enthusiast who managed to marry or parent such a skeptic, I can think of few places more suitable for a maiden voyage than Brine, where each oyster is fully severed from its shell, and entirely free from shucking debris.

Much as a fresh bagel doesn’t require a toaster, the finest oysters don’t need sauce, but Brine provides a trio that probably deserves a standing place on the table. Even if I don’t want to sully oysters with house made hot sauce, sheer and energetic; liquid kimchi stung by ginger, or a bracing citrus mignonette, I bet something on Brine’s menu would respond beautifully to those thoughtful flavor compositions.

Speaking of bagels, Brine serves what’s billed as one. Its interpretation involves griddled brioche, wide as a teacup, spread thickly with crème fraiche and crowned with a salty nub of sturgeon caviar. Brine doesn’t serve anything as prosaic as bread, nor does it deign to put crackers on its oyster platters, so the “bagel & schmear” is a serviceable carb choice for someone who wants to foray into the creative wine-based cocktails here.

But if it’s just roe you’re after, a $30 triple bagel plate might not be the screaming deal it looks like alongside 1 ounce of sturgeon caviar, listed at $60. The crème fraiche overwhelms the featured ingredient, and the garnishing chorizo is so mild that one gets the sense that pork was included for transgression’s sake alone.

While on the topic of disappointments, let’s dispense quickly of the smoked cod chowder—which is basically how I instructed a server soon after spooning into it. In theory, a thick fishy puree frolicking in smoke could function as a latter-day crab dip. At Brine, though, it amounts to a gluey mess, studded with gummy bits of gnocchi and crisscrossed by a fried plank of bland cod that immediately shed its outer coat. When a diner at a nearby table asked his server about the dish, she told him, “It’s super unique!” which is F&B code for “Don’t.”

But the menu’s subhead doesn’t say “bagels and chowder”: There are restaurants much further north for those items. You come to Brine for the masterful crudo, dry aged until it approximates a fisherman’s jerky but alluringly resonant of the sea. Or perhaps you’d prefer the crab salad, which breaks out the components of a traditional crab cake, so lump blue crab and toasted breadcrumbs cohabitate a hillock of judiciously dressed greens.

Mussels given a Sicilian-style treatment of fermented lemon, green olives, and capers are equally terrific.

Whichever route you take, it should wend toward the lobster ice cream baked Alaska, a gleefully decadent sculpture of vanilla cake, saffron meringue, and miso caramel sauce. Most restaurants that serve the iconic dessert make a big show of setting it on fire and playing up the theatricality of the moment.

At Brine, of course, the carefully constructed dish speaks for itself. Strike that. It sings.

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Brine: 1435 Naldo Ave., #3, Jacksonville 32207 | Hours: Lunch, Mon-Fri: 11-2:30; Dinner: Mon-Thu 4:30-9; Fri–Sat 5-10 | Brine website | (904) 240-0777