BY KAREN DEUTSCH • PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANGEL TUCKER
MATUNUCK ATELIER
151 Old Tower Hill Rd., Wakefield, 238-8759, matunuckatelier. com
Open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. Reservations accepted. Wheelchair accessible. Valet parking.
CUISINE New England seafood with Asian and Italian influences.
CAPACITY Well over 200.
VIBE The seafood equivalent of a Vegas casino: Block out the outside world and you might believe you’ re under water.
PRICES Appetizers: $ 6 –$ 38( more for caviar and seafood towers); entrees: $ 16 –$ 90; dessert: $ 4 –$ 9.
KAREN’ S PICKS Make a meal out of the copious number of small dishes.
You might be paying $ 30 for a lobster roll, but the mood is so casual that a bathing suit under your clothes seems de rigueur, as does salt on your skin.
Matunuck Atelier, on the other hand, comes at seafood from a different angle. The restaurant is on a busy strip in Wakefield, the building is entirely new, and the interior is decidedly glossy. It’ s sprawling in many ways: Staff is counted by the dozen, diners are counted by the hundreds, textiles and accents are too numerous to count at all. The walls, covered in sleek midcenturygrained wood, curve upward like the bulkhead of a ship, with thick wooden shutters over the windows. A behemoth bar sits to the side, anchored in brass and glass and home to thirty people. Blue-gray walls, a
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