This new hot spot has all the potential for a Manasquan dining staple; passionate, talented chefs, some great hits on the menu, and a good vibe. We ate there twice for dinner and did a take-out lunch to get a real feel for the place.
Buoys is known for their sandwiches, as they should be. Their Buoy’s fried chicken sandwich was perfection, I had to run back and tell them how good it was. Their cheesesteak was also very good, it had a nice zing to it with melted cheese and a little heat with the peppers, and the bread had a beautiful crisp and wasn’t too heavy for the sandwich, which I appreciated.
Buoys for dinner is a limited seating experience with a menu they prepare in advance. It takes the guesswork out of choosing, as your only choice is which entrée you want. If I had a restaurant, this is exactly what I would do, craft a different menu every week showcasing my passion for food and serving it in a small intimate setting with absolutely fantastic service, which Buoys definitely has.
It’s a BYOB, (and you all know how I feel about that), but here they bring ice in the chill bucket for the champagne, and they have proper glasses for the wine. If you have to have a BYOB, this is the way to do it.
I’ll talk about the experience from both dinners and our favorites, which happened to be all of the seafood items, hence the name of this place. Seafood is their strength. For the first course at our first dinner, they wowed us with an ahi tuna appetizer. Now I know everybody has ahi tuna on their menu these days, you can’t go to any restaurant and not see it in the appetizer section. We have all had it in 1000 different ways, but somehow Buoys introduced a new one. That was the freshest tuna I’ve eaten in my many years in New Jersey.
It was a beautiful red, and incredibly fresh, it could’ve been swimming an hour before, which is everything you want in raw tuna. The flavors of this appetizer melted together. There was the heat of the chilies, the sweetness of the Mandarin oranges, acid in the balsamic, and a little hint of something I couldn’t quite place. It left everyone wanting more and was a wonderful way to start the meal.
At our second dinner, we started with a French onion soup, which looked beautiful in the bowl, but the practicality of it was challenging to eat. The large fois gras crouton at the bottom of the bowl was very difficult to cut, so it made the dish difficult to eat, and while the flavor of the broth was rich and delicious, it didn’t have the cheese aspect of a French onion soup.
There was no meltiness or cheesiness to it. I am all for elevated flavors and spins, but sometimes the classic gets it right and a replication has to keep the integrity of the elements of that.  For the second course at our first meal they served this fantastic croquette. It was so light that when your fork cut into it instead of being dense and thick like an Arancini, it was super light and crisp. The technique was superior to any croquette I’ve ever had. The sauce was super flavorful as well and the freshness of the chives made this a perfect bite.
The second course for our second dining experience also was a winner. The fried chicken appetizer was amazing. I mean fried chicken can go a myriad of different ways. It can be greasy, bready, dry, it’s not an easy pull off for dinner. But their fried chicken, like their Buoys chicken sandwich, was amazing; the pickles perfect, and the spice on point.
Now we had two pasta courses at our two dinners and you know I am a bit of a pasta snob, so I will preface that before I say I was not excited about the pastas here. There is “al dente” and then there’s just too thick and hard, and that’s what we had with the two pastas that we tried. The fillings and sauces were not a flavorful addition to those dishes either.
For the entrees, we tried the hanger steak and also the pork entrée, the meat options at the two dinners. Both were undercooked and difficult to cut and chew. The pork was cooked in the “sous vide” method which can get tricky, mine appeared raw, and it may not have been, but it was difficult to chew and cut and the bean-laden broth was spicy, it definitely needed a note on the menu about that. But I could appreciate where they were going with this dish, and I think they would’ve gotten there with a nice sear on the meats and a little more structure with the sides.
However, again Buoys shines with their fish dishes, both seafood entrees we tried at each dinner were fantastic! The halibut was perfectly cooked and the fluke was crispy and incredibly delicious with a side of cous cous bursting with flavor. Buoys knows how to cook fish and cook it great.
The desserts were both a hit and a miss for me. I thought the cinnamon roll was good, I prefer my cinnamon rolls a little bit softer and gooier, and theirs had a lot of crispy edges and a firmer inside to it, but the flavor was nice and the presentation was great. Our second dessert was a cheesecake dish creatively served in a glass cup. This one missed the flavor mark for me in all directions and was my least favorite dish from both dinners. There was something sour tasting about it I couldn’t quite place, and it overpowered all the other elements of the dish.
Overall, it was a slow-paced, but enjoyable evening out (we sat at 6:30 pm and dessert was served after 9 pm), which is average timing for Buoys from what we experienced in our two visits. However, the dishes are all plated and cooked with care, and while some may have missed the mark, the potential is there for most dishes, so was the flavor, technique and presentation. I don’t mind waiting when the chefs care and they’re trying to create a dining experience, which they are definitely doing here.
Buoys houses massive talent, the chef coming from the Butchers Block in Long Branch and some of the crew having formally worked in places like Palmer’s Meats in Belmar. These are people who know food and have a creative concept. But even when the world is your oyster, streamlining a concept can help define the food, and allow the dishes to spring forth the talents of a place on its plate.
Buoys has a lot of potential and is already hitting the mark on many creative dishes. I love the idea of a non-menu; it says to me “This is what we cooked. This is what we feel. This is where our heart is this week.” I love that, but you have to be careful when you are talented and passionate that you aren’t stretching a little too far and that’s what I feel will develop here at this restaurant as it continues forward.
Right now it’s a little all over the place in an interesting way, which comes with the freedom of a concept like this, but we enjoyed some wonderful highlights here that could make this restaurant a staple at the Jersey Shore. I’m eager to see how it continues to grow.
Overall, I give Buoys a 3.8.
Maria O’Donnell is a food and wine writer at the Jersey Shore and you can follow her @foodwritergirl on Instagram and @CookingwithMaria on Facebook
