IMMEDIATELY UPON entry to Deux Chats, the Art Nouveau-style bar/restaurant in Brooklyn, N.Y., you’re greeted with an extravagant bar-top display of crab legs, lobster claws, shrimp, oysters, clams and sunny lemons, all perched on mounds of crushed ice. In the dining room, heads turn as two-tiered seafood towers parade by. At the base of the one that landed on my table, mussels, oysters and clams nestled among seaweed tendrils, pickled vegetables and radishes. The top tier featured a kick-line of those crab legs, bright-red lobster tails and shrimp, plus pink cubes of salmon crudo garnished with wasabi caviar, and a dainty dice of tuna tartare served on scallop shells. A display like this invariably inspires a chain reaction of copycat orders, at Deux Chats and at restaurants around the country where the classic seafood tower is this season’s towering success.

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