Cervo's – an Iberian seafood counter on Canal Street

At 43 Canal Street, where Chinatown meets the Lower East Side, Cervo's hides behind tiled walls that do nothing to muffle the noise inside. The room is narrow and close-set, built around an open kitchen and a long bar, and looks like an oyster bar, where just-shucked shellfish sit on hand. The restaurant has served Iberian-inspired seafood since the summer of 2017, opened by restaurateur Nialls Fallon and chef Nick Perkins, with Perkins' wife and partner Leah Campbell, a year after the trio launched their first restaurant, Hart's, in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. They started Hart's first and followed about a year later with Cervo's on the Lower East Side. It carries a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, the distinction for cooking judged excellent value, and sits alongside Hart's, The Fly, Eel Bar, Zig Zag Oyster Bar and Minnow as part of the same small, close-knit restaurant family.

01The room and the setting

Before it was Cervo's, 43 Canal Street was the Manhattan outpost of Pies 'n' Thighs; co-owner Nialls Fallon discovered the space because he lives only two blocks away, around the corner. He and his partner and chef Nick Perkins, together with partner Leah Campbell, decided it would make the perfect sister restaurant to Hart's, their original venture in Brooklyn, and set about transforming it from an all-white space into something with more character, a job spearheaded by Russell Perkins, Nick's brother, who oversaw the design. The result is a small room of shiplap ceilings, a sliver of repurposed marble, and a palette of avocado green, terracotta and yellow that feels chic and retro rather than dated, built like a long bar with the kitchen and seafood as part of the room, in tile, wood and metalwork — durable, unfussy materials borrowed from Portuguese seafood counters and cervecerias.

Though the restaurant opened in the summer of 2017, the interiors still don't feel overly polished, in part because the owners allow for imperfection — the mosaic tiles are meant to tarnish, the wood to take on the patina of a decade of dinner services. From April to October the kitchen pushes dinner onto the pavement; those seats are first come, first served, walk-in only, with reservations held for every indoor table year-round.

02The chef

Nick Perkins came to Cervo's by way of Andrew Tarlow's Brooklyn restaurants. He spent fourteen years in New York working at several of Tarlow's places — Diner, Marlow & Sons and Romans — before striking out on his own with two partners, Nialls Fallon and his wife, Leah. Hart's came first; because both Hart's and Cervo's are genuinely small rooms, the team leaned into the limited space they had rather than fighting it.

Insider tip

Open nightly 5:30–11pm; outdoor tables April–October are walk-in only; indoor tables take reservations year-round.

At the Canal Street opening in 2017, Perkins and Fallon worked alongside co-chef Aaron Crowder, with the kitchen turning away from the fried chicken that had occupied the space before and focusing instead on seafood built from Iberian preparations. Even the lamb burger, a holdover from Hart's, got an Iberian edit: a mainstay dish got a new topping option, anchovies, which Perkins — who has a dairy allergy of his own — uses to supply the savoury lift a slice of cheese might otherwise provide.

03The cooking

The kitchen works a short, seafood-driven menu built on what the team calls sustainable ingredients from the Northeast, cooked with the techniques and spice of coastal Spain and Portugal. Paprika, orange, fennel and chorizo recur, the flavours that define Spanish cooking as much as any single recipe, while the room itself nods to Portuguese cervecerias — seafood counters that serve big plates of cold and grilled seafood alongside drinkable wines and beers. The current card, read in October 2026, runs from olives with paprika and salt cod croquetas through black bass with celery and preserved lemon, bomba rice with braised squid and cilantro, and a whole seabream cooked a la plancha.

04What to order

Start where the kitchen does best, with fish straight off the plancha: the seabream, whole and blistered, or the fried skate wing, dressed with torpedo onions and garlic. The bomba rice, slicked with braised squid and cilantro, is the plate built to share across a table of three or four. The lamb burger, finished with frisee and, for a few dollars more, marinated anchovies, remains the one non-seafood order worth making; it is a direct descendant of the version served at Hart's. Finish with the flan de queso or the pão de lo layer cake, a Portuguese sponge any Lisbon pastry counter would recognise.

05Wine and drinks

The list runs almost entirely Spanish and Portuguese, built around an emphasis on madeira, coastal and island-produced wines, and natural producers — bottles that favour native grapes over the usual export varietals. Vermouth gets its own menu, served on the rocks or with soda and an olive or a twist, alongside a short, serious sherry list poured by the glass. The cocktail list leans classic and Iberian in spirit: a 50/50 martini, a mezcal Martinez, a Madeira sour built from whisky and lemon. Most of it is designed to pair with a glass of unfortified white from the Iberian peninsula, which is really the point of the whole list.

06When to go and booking

Cervo's opens every night from 5:30pm to 11pm. Reservations are taken for every indoor table year-round, and the kitchen keeps room for walk-ins besides; from April through October, outdoor tables appear on Canal Street itself, weather permitting, and those seats go strictly to walk-ins, first come, first served. The room is small — part of what makes it loud, part of what makes it work — so arriving early or booking the indoor tables ahead is the more reliable route, especially now that a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide sends more readers this way.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.