Eating lunch at Sea Change is less of a meal and more of an event. But the truly fascinating aspect of this trendy restaurant is that you aren’t there to watch the event. No, at Sea Change, you are the event. Allow me to explain.
The restaurant’s interior is a cross between a planetarium and an aquarium. Shiny, seafoam green-colored pillars run from the floor up and into the ceiling, where recessed lighting provides a mysterious and Saturn-like ripple of rings. Tiny lights pepper the ceiling giving it a wonderfully summer-night sky feel, as though the stars are actually holes in the sky – and on the other side is a much simpler time. If you stare long enough, you can almost feel it…
If you take your eyes off the ceiling and look around the restaurant, you notice seagreen booths patterned to look like welcoming beds of underwater plant life. For no extra cost, you can take your meal at the rounded counter that surrounds the chefs who are busy at work shucking oysters, tossing salads, and grilling seafood. To sit here is to be the young, curious eyes of a child who presses his face up against the outside of a fishbowl to get the best view possible of the strange creatures swimming inside…
Finally, you sit. You look at the menu, you order, you chat with your partner. Windows three stories high stretch out in front of you, and while you initially admired the vista this ground floor restaurant provided, when your food arrives and you begin eating, you can’t shake the feeling that the tables have turned and those gorgeous windows have turned the world’s eyes on you. And finally it is clear: it is you who is smack dab in the middle of the fishbowl, and it is you who is the strange creature 
swimming inside. I don’t know… maybe it’s the giant paintings of humungous faces that really are staring right at you – but in a very surreal way, you begin to realize you are the event these faces have come here to watch. And although the restaurant’s crisp silver, black, and green decor reminded me of a stylish Roger Moore-era James Bond movie, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was actually starring in a Stanley Kubrick film.
Oh, the food? I had Mixed Green Salad with sherry hazelnut vinaigrette served with toast with chevre goat cheese and a fish sandwich with fries. It was fine. I had a chocolate dessert plate called chocolate cremeux, brownie slice, chocolate mouse, black currant caramel crumbs, thin slice of cocoa jelly dressed with chocolate sauce. It was fabulous. But for me, the food was secondary. I realized pretty quickly that you don’t necessarily go to Sea Change for the food. You go for the experience. You go for the emotion. You go to be a part of something. Though I’m still not exactly sure what, I do know that I was part of something there. It really sticks with you…
Sea Change Restaurant during Restaurant Week 2012
Lunch Menu $10
