At Time and Tide, an Overlooked Cut of Tuna Is a Showstopping Must-Order Dish

“It’s this fun, really, really tender, delicious cut of meat that is 1,000% underutilized, under-thought of, so we’re just having fun with it,” says Garcia.

Garcia’s affinity to this particular cut of fish is what helped make its way onto the menu at Time and Tide, a seafood-focused restaurant from Kent Hospitality Group. The tuna collar is listed in the “big” section of the restaurant’s menu alongside other sharing plates designed to be split between two or three people (maybe more, if their supplier happens to have especially big cuts to offer on any given day).

Grilled and then seasoned with gochujang and sesame, the dish is not meant to be eaten delicately and served with scallop shells intended to be used as utensils for tearing the tender meat from the bone.

But if it’s such a delicious cut, you may be wondering: Why isn’t it more commonly seen on menus? The answer to that, it turns out, is largely economical.

“Most chefs want the top loin of the tuna, or they want the belly. And that’s the prime cut. That’s what everyone is looking for,” explains Garcia. As a result, tuna fishermen will often not collect the heads or collars of the tuna at all — they’ll discard them back into the sea, or use them as bait to catch other fish, so they can save room on the boat for the cuts that they know they’ll be able to sell. Most seafood purveyors don’t even list it as an item for ordering. And even when chefs actively seek it out, it can take quite a bit of legwork to find a willing supplier. (Garcia recalls even having to “beg” fishermen to hold onto their tuna collars so he could buy them.)

Initially, the tuna collar wasn’t designed to be a menu item at Time and Tide. But like so many great restaurant dishes, it came largely as a result of happenstance.

“We had a whole tuna that we had gotten for our opening party. And obviously, we’re just using all the bits and all the pieces,” says Garcia. Being a fan of grilled hamachi collars, Garcia decided almost on a whim to toss the tuna collars on the grill, whip up a gochujang-based sauce for them, and run it as an off-menu item for the occasion.

“As soon as we put it on the plate, it was an instant, like, ‘this has to go on the menu.’ And so right away, we started making phone calls to start sourcing tuna collars.”

The process for making the dish starts by brining the collar in a saltwater solution, then marinating it in a gochujang soy glaze. It’s then grilled and finished in the oven, before being glazed a second time and topped off with puffed amaranth, sesame seeds, and chives. It’s served with a salad, but that salad is most definitely not a side.

“The idea is that you can have this tactile moment to make almost like hand rolls, where you have nori sheets, bib lettuce, different radishes, and shiso leaves that you’re able to kind of make these little hand tacos,” Garcia explains.

For him, the dish represents the joyful, relaxed ethos that the team wants their guests to experience.

“It’s in the style in which we like to eat, and one in which the restaurant really invokes: Dive in there, use your hands,” Garcia says.

“It’s this fun, shareable piece that has both dark and light meat on it. So you get these different textures, and these different tastes, which is really nice.”

Time and Tide is open daily for dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m., and for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays.

Ariana DiValentino is a writer, filmmaker, and actor based in Brooklyn. Follow her on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok. Follow Resy, too.