A faux tree in the middle of the Sea Smoke dining room varies the view and contributes noise-dampening properties.

Slow-smoked lamb ribs with pomegranate glaze, pistachio and  mint chermoula.

The view of downtown Troy from the expansive patio of Sea Smoke Waterfront Grill, in the Starbuck Island development in Green Island. After the installation of curtains and heaters, a March opening is projected for patio seating.

Octopus and potatoes with olive-tomato ragout.

The interior was designed by the same Chicago firm that did Sea Smoke's Colonie sibling, Toro Cantina.  

Piggyback Oysters feature fried oysters and pulled pork atop a johnnycake.

Burrata salad with apple-fennel slaw, blackberry agrodolce and crostini.

Nearly a mile of rope went into the Sea Smoke interior, including as a divider behind the host stand and woven into parts of the ceiling. 

The $21 bacon-cheeseburger at Sea Smoke is rich with the flavor of dry-aged beef.

A neon message on the wall of the entryway to Sea Smoke Waterfront Grill.

A side of kabocha squash is adorned with tahini ricotta, sumac honey, pepitas and pomegranate.

A daily feature includes a rotating fish selection, with salmon seen here, baked in a salt crust and presented on a tableside trolley.

On an early visit to Sea Smoke, the new waterfront grill on the Starbuck Island development in Green Island with an impeccable view of downtown Troy, I asked to be moved to a less tightly crowded table. I could have fork-lifted food from neighboring tables, and that felt a shade too close. Dining out being a calculated risk in these times, even for the triple-vaxxed, Sea Smoke was busy both nights, even dining early and midweek. Staff were all smiles and accommodating, finding a table on the bar side with more space and, frankly, a better view of the scene from well-heeled customers to the arching boughs of the JO Group’s now-signature faux tree. 

The owner is Jamie Ortiz, the chef-turned-owner of Albany's Prime 677, and savvy entrepreneur behind Toro Cantina in Colonie, with its vivid Day of the Dead styling, bubble-gum cocktails, LED lights and selfie station; and the Prime Burger and Shakehouse food hall counter in Troy’s River Street Market, where guests 'gram burgers and “Outrageous Shakes!” studded with brownies or candy bars. 

Let’s pretend it’s summer and you’ve scored a patio table. The sun glints off the Green Island bridge, rowers crease the water with every stroke, pleasure boats cruise by and staff pull cold beers and prosecco splits behind the massive outdoor bar. Out come your oysters, picked from a daily selection, cleanly shucked and resting on ice with a floral mignonette. Your $38 Connecticut-style lobster roll is bursting at the seams and glistening with warm butter in its brioche bun. Your pal’s dry-aged burger is hand-smashed, full of flavor and juicy like the sibling burgers across the way. Your requested medium-rare is right on point. You’ll pay $21 here with superb shoestring fries, all salty and hot; at Prime Burger, a customized double stack rings in around $12. Why? Because at Sea Smoke you’re sitting on the best stretch of riverfront real estate for miles. And nothing else I say matters. Sea Smoke is going to be a hit.

But it’s January, and you’re here because everyone else is. And the problem with hype is hope. I studied the unusual Mediterranean menu awash in fruit butters, black garlic and seafood. I watched social media posts of the new general manager, Quang Tran, a polished local frontman from Peck’s Arcade and Quang’s Vietnamese Bistro, performing tableside excavations of a fish fillet from its fig leaf and salt tomb.

Now it’s our turn and we wait, our dinner cooling before us, while the fish — the last to arrive, and by trolley — is extricated and plated with violently salted broccoli rabe and a plop of vegetable purée. Nothing on the plate is touching, which is good if you worry about such things, and nothing touches us. After such pageantry, it’s underwhelming, a surgical assembly of neutral fish and two veg.

The fish trolley could be a metaphor for meals that clearly take work but never quite score. The same for a space that surely cost a lot but isn’t certain what it is. In one look, I count medieval chandeliers, pendant chandeliers, orb chandeliers, a dangling macrame wall, subway tiles, vertical tiles, blue velvet and the telltale glow of blue LED. All this before I get to the tree on the other side of the room. A white corrugated ceiling suggests we’re actually in a warehouse, or a shipping container. But with so many fixtures, we could be in the lighting showroom of Ikea. And how does the gentle octopus in silvery 2D relief tie in with post-millennial fluorescent writing on a faux grass wall? I want it all to make sense. What the actual heck is going on? 

A half-dozen cleanly shucked oysters puts us in good spirits; cocktails cause concern. After sampling four cocktails in two visits, I can’t recommend any, unless you’re into Jolly Ranchers, night sweats and a sugar crash. Not the tequila High Tide, with pomegranate liqueur, blood orange, agave and lime. Not the Reel Time, with bourbon, rosemary, lemon and maple syrup. Not the Calypso — which should be a mariner’s dream — with gin, ginger, honey, lemon and ginger beer. Asked if we’d like another, our “no” was so firm the server quipped, “Guess you didn’t like them!” She’s right. Even an Old Fashioned turned demerara brown once stirred was off-the-charts sweet.

We find very few problems front of house — admirable for a brand-new team only six weeks in. Servers memorize orders, water is replenished and remedies, like procuring cutlery after we’d stared at our plates for a few minutes, happen fast. But overall, Sea Smoke leaves us deflated and confused.

I kept hoping for a standout, a silver lining. A complex burrata and berry salad has seven supporting parts, including blackberry agrodolce and coriander vinaigrette, but the burrata is too cold to show its subtle flavor, and the basil oil and smoked salt could be dot-dashing Morse code but can’t disguise sliced fennel as more than fancy slaw. Sure, we snarf down fried pita wedges that taste like fried dough, but a red pepper-walnut muhammara dip, neither smoky nor sweet, is so ferociously salted we’re gurning while getting it down. A charred Spanish octopus tentacle is tender but boggy, oozing water when pressed, and a pungent tomato-olive ragout hiding harissa and black garlic is funky, like kalamata tapenade, and spanks the limb into submission. How about the crisp zucchini chips in a sheer batter negligee with no flavor bar the fryer oil? On top, the wads of lightly melted feta deposits like chewed gum offer little help.

Don’t get me wrong. There are moments of charm. We have an a-ha moment over piggyback fried oysters riding a shock of pulled pork on tiny johnnycake medallions. Lemon-ricotta dessert fritters are fluffy and fab. Sunchokes roasted with honey and black truffle are succulent bites. The sticky pomegranate glaze and mint chermoula on criss-crossed lamb ribs has a happy Middle Eastern feel, but there’s so little meat I abort knife and fork to tear silver skin with bare teeth. (Lambs are little, as any lollipop chop will show, but so skinny, perhaps a pig would do?) 

I’ve heard good things about the fried chicken sandwich topped with tahini, whipped feta and apricot date butter. I wish I’d ordered that, and the hamachi crudo. After spending nore  than $300 in two visits, I guess the question is how much must we order to find the holy grail? 

Well, Sea Smoke has a captive audience: the Starbuck Island residents who storm the gates at 4 p.m. Let’s face it: A gin-and-tonic with a dry-aged steak a stroll from your door has got to feel good. 

If the best things at Sea Smoke are the $4 oysters and a burger they famously do well, is Sea Smoke just smart business by the JO Group, catering to a moneyed clientele for whom the artsy, sometimes gritty, streets of Troy lack fine-dining appeal? Who knows? The outdoor patio heaters are ready for a March opening, and I’m certain Sea Smoke in all its riverfront glory is poised to do well.

Address: 10 Starbuck Drive, Green Island    Hours: 4 to 10 p.m. Monday to Saturday. Closed Sunday. Happy hour: 4 to 6 p.m.  Prices: Apps, raw bar, soups and pizettes, $14 to $22; mains, $19 to $50; desserts, $10; cocktails, $13 to $15 Info: 518-326-4164 and seasmokegrill.com 

Award-winning food and drinks writer and longtime TU dining critic, Susie Davidson Powell, has covered the upstate dining scene for a decade. She writes weekly reviews, a monthly cocktail column and the biweekly e-newsletter The Food Life. Susie has received national awards for food criticism from the Society of Features Journalism and served as a 2020 James Beard Awards judge for New York state. You can reach her at thefoodlifeTU@gmail.com and follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefoodlife.co