There's a particular kind of restraint that separates a good raw bar from a great one—the kind that resists overseasoning, over-plating, and the urge to gild what's already pristine. Bar Susanne, Matthew Maddy's newly opened cocktail and raw bar at Domino Park, seems to understand this implicitly. Designed by the James Beard Award-nominated architect and restaurateur himself, the space is airy and coastal without veering into theme-park kitsch. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the East River; the bar itself becomes scenery, not spectacle.
What distinguishes Bar Susanne from the city's crowded roster of seafood venues is its obsessive localism. The menu highlights purveyors from Long Island's North Fork and other New York waterways—not as a marketing flourish, but as a genuine operational constraint. This is seafood sourced from waters you can see from the dining room, prepared with the kind of clarity that only comes from knowing exactly where your oysters spent last week.
The raw bar selections anchor the menu, but it's the broader seafood focus that demonstrates Maddy's vision for the space. Every plate reads as deliberate: raw preparations that let briney sweetness do the work, cooked dishes that respect their ingredients' fundamental character. This is the opposite of ambition for its own sake. It's an argument for understatement.
The beverage program, curated by Milos Zica—whose work at Employees Only helped define New York's modern cocktail movement—zeroes in on martinis and an extensive agave portfolio. In an era of Instagram-bait cocktails, there's something almost defiant about a bar that plants its flag in gin and vermouth. The drinks will be cold, precise, and utterly unconcerned with novelty.
Bar Susanne opens as a sibling to Cafe Susanne, the all-day cafe that debuted adjacent to it in November 2025. Both are named after a preeminent female artist and mentor of Maddy's, a biographical detail that speaks to the designer's sensibility: taste rooted in genuine appreciation, not surface-level aesthetics. In a neighborhood increasingly defined by luxury developments and spec-driven projects, this kind of personal conviction matters. It's visible in every detail, from the sourcing to the service to the studied simplicity of the space itself.