Alex Raij and Eder Montero met while working in the kitchen of a sprawling, impersonal, gloomy modern-Spanish restaurant that lasted about two years. They went on to get married and, as joint chefs and owners, opened a string of compact, intimate, slinky modern-Spanish restaurants that are still in business.
Their one misfire was a small, intimate non-Spanish coffee shop in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. After dusting themselves off, they replaced the cafe tables with taller and longer ones, traded the pastry cases for a bar, installed a stripe of backlighted glass blocks that cast a subaqueous glow on the room, and in September reopened as Saint Julivert Fisherie.
And what is a fisherie, you ask, having quickly consulted your French, Spanish and English dictionaries and found no such word? Saint Julivert is my first, but if it is anything to go by, then a fisherie is a seafood establishment that aspires to be more than a raw bar but does not want to be mistaken for a full-bore restaurant. Wines come mostly from coastal regions (and are organized by the nearest body of salt water). Small plates abound. And if you guessed that they are something like the tapas that Ms. Raij and Mr. Montero explore at El Quinto Pino, Txikito and La Vara, but without the running Spanish theme, you are not far off.
Ymy's Very Own 