The duo behind NYC London-leaning King is opening a new British seafood restaurant right next door in Manhattan. Co-owners chef Jess Shadbolt and Annie Shi are opening Dean’s at 213 Sixth Avenue, near King Street, in Soho in winter 2025 or early 2026.

In the past year, New York’s been undergoing an ongoing seafood moment, too: the reboot of Lundy’s; Dame and Lord’s team’s Crevette; restaurateur John McDonald’s Seahorse (opening later this month); etc. The Dean’s duo — combined with King co-founder Clare de Boer — has been on an expansion tear since they opened their original restaurant in 2016. Shi opened her own Chinatown wine bar Lei, in June. Before that, the trio opened an all-day pasta restaurant, Jupiter, in Rockefeller Center in 2022. De Boer currently runs Stissing House, which she moved to upstate in Pine Plains, New York, in 2022. The cookbook for their inaugural restaurant, which they opened in 2016, King Cookbook, comes out in November.

Dean’s is all about British seafood, inspired by Shadbolt’s hometown of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, in England. “As you get older, you start to feel: ‘I’ve certainly found a feeling of real nostalgia for British cooking,’” she says. “This is a combination of bringing together my love of fish and bringing a new perspective of that food to New York City,” with inspiration drawn from British coastlines she knows well. “Very simple, but classic and heritage,” she adds. “Delicate cooking.”

In fact, the restaurant is named after a dayboat fisherman from her British seaside town, Dean Fryer. She describes him as the “last remaining dayboat fisherman on the beach,” from whom she and others would always purchase their seafood through the years. (Fryer has an open invitation to attend his namesake restaurant’s eventual opening; he was originally nervous about flights, Shadbolt recounts, but he eventually said he’d come.)

The table-service restaurant will offer raw seafood, including oysters, which Shadbolt delightfully hopes to serve from the kitchen door; grilled Scottish langoustines doused in parsley butter; stargazy fish pie (a Cornish-style baked dish where fish peek out of the crust); boiled ham; mackerel and potato salad; and more. Desserts can include marmalade tarts, treacle pudding (a steamed sponge cake made with this molasses-like syrup), and baked-to-order chocolate fondants (“We like puddings in the U.K. that stick to your ribs,” she says).

The centerpiece of the kitchen is the AGA cooker (which stands for “Aktiebolaget Gas Accumulator”), which will be visible through the open kitchen. Shadbolt calls the cookers “British institutions” and “the hearth and the heart” of homes. The picturesque enamel cast-iron stoves are known for their high-temperature and slow cooking.

“I think it’d be lovely to showcase this beautiful piece of British heritage,” she says, “and do some dishes that are hopefully quite unseen in the city but in very gentle, delicate, simple ways.” The potted shrimp with hot butter crumpets will be made on the contraption.

Shi will oversee Dean’s drinks. The list will focus on sparkling wines from the U.K., and spirits, plus the requisite Guinness. Cocktails include takes on the Pimm’s Cup, the Black Velvet with beer and English sparkling wine, and a gin martini made with Fishers gin (which is made in Aldeburgh) and Maldon sea salt.

Dean’s space itself is small — 1,000 square feet, with a capacity to seat 32, of which six seats will be at the bar.