Zip down Route 70 in Cherry Hill, NJ and it’s a familiar blur of restaurant names. There’s the Friendly’s for summertime ice-cream stops. A Houlihan’s just beyond recently relocated from its long-time post inside the Cherry Hill Mall. The up-and-coming Pei Wei Asian Diner neighboring a new Potbelly Sandwiches…the list goes on.
One name that stands out among the corporate fray is Blue2O, a new South Jersey seafooder, which recently opened along this busy corridor.
Blue2O trends toward the high end with its daily menu offerings, signature cocktails and more adventurous ingredient combinations. In that respect it’s similar to the fish joints you’ve been to before, like McCormick & Schmick’s or Oceannaire, except much lessy stuffy, much less I’m-here-for-a-family-party.
Credit Blue2O’s cool decor for setting itself apart from the competition. The main bar’s unconventional design is accented by an illuminated liquor tower and anchored by an oversized table that seats six. On the evening I visited, a group of women who looked like they had worked late at the office were capping off the night with some boss-bashing over Blue2O signature salads and cucumber melon mojitos.
Beyond them, a wall of wines stretch straight to the ceiling, an interesting architectural detail worth taking note of from the raw bar for four situated below. Half-moon banquettes surround the perimeter of the main dining room, which makes for inconspicuous food hawking. A navy and orange color scheme, which feels vaguely nautical, is offset by small clusters of Chihuly glass wall hangings which are anything but.
Executive chef Jasper Alivia is at the helm here (pardon the high-seas pun), turning out hardwood fire grilled seafood, made-from-scratch desserts and house-recommended dishes like maple bourbon salmon and pretzel-crusted grouper. This may be Alivia’s first turn as the star of the show but he’s no stranger to working alongside culinary celebs like Rocco DiSpirito, with whom he interned at Union Pacific in New York, and Guillermo Pernot of Cuba Libre.
The sriracha shrimp came highly recommended by our server but we opted for Peking calamari, whose flash-fried tendrils were blanketed in hoisin and sweet chili coconut. The appetizer was a welcome spin on the traditional version, even if it did leave behind a spicy, syrupy aftertaste that was hard to kill with a glass of wine alone.
Or with the pan-seared Ahi tuna that followed. That fish, served carefully fanned out around a pile of stir fried veggies, ice-cream-scoop sized mound of sticky rice and ponzu sauce, was certainly good on its own terms but a weak headliner to its more enticing opening act.
Crab cakes, a staple of any seafood spot, were curiously not one of the chef-recommended menu items here. We ordered them nonetheless, despite our server’s word of warning that they were on the smaller side. That may just have been the presentation of three crab cakes, rather than the usual two, a trio of savory mounds accompanied by a plucky mango pineapple pico and lemon aioli.
Dessert was an airy mango cheesecake but a to-go key lime pie we tried the next day was the winner of the two, deliciously tart and lined by a cardboard-thin graham cracker crust.
One recession-friendly bonus to eating here is that all of the entrees are accompanied by a choice of salad or slaw; steak and chicken dishes are paired with a gratis salt-crusted baked potato. Regardless of whether you’re reminded of the last time you had dinner at the diner, Alivia is happy with his decision to offer some additional value. Judging from the lingering dinner crowd on a recent Thursday night, guests seemed happy too.
For all of its efforts to bypass the stereotypes that come with a chain, the wait staff is almost identical in age and experience to those you’d find dishing out ribs at the Chili’s next door. Our server was friendly and attentive, sure, but her suggestions seemed too navigated by what had a star next to the menu rather than what she actually liked best. Everything we ordered (which was purposefully without stars) was simply reassured by a perfunctory “That’s good.”
Luckily, she was right. Everything was good. And certainly much better than whatever restaurants you might have passed on the way there.
Visit Blue2O
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