My dear friend and I bought a $60-of-food/drink-for-$30 deal on yelp.com and were really excited to go eat oysters to our hearts content. We had discussed buying 2 of the deals, but settled on one. Looking back, we should have gone for both…It was rather easy to eat and drink $120 worth there. We did notice a sign saying that from 12-6 every day they have $1 oysters at the bar and we made a mental note to return for that sometime.

When we arrived, we took in the bare-bones seafood market atmosphere, with tables so close together that they were essentially all connected and had to be pulled out to allow a person to squeeze into the wall-side seats. Nothing fancy here, but the freshest, most outstanding seafood and casual, friendly service. I love this kind of vibe in a restaurant. Nothing pretentious, no frills, no hype, just quality food.

We each had a glass of wine and some of the delicious bread while we figured out what to order. We decided to start with an array of 2 each of 6 different types of east coast oysters. Both of us prefer the sweet, juicy types over the briny (as Betsy would say “the-I-just-swallowed-a huge-mouthful-of-ocean-water type) so we stuck to those that had descriptions of lettuce-y, light , mild, clean, flavors. They arrived on the classic bed of shaved ice and with lemon, cocktail sauce and a vinaigrette. We slurped those babies down so fast that it surprised even me, and we went right ahead and ordered 12 more. This time we stuck to our 6 each of our 2 favs from the previous platter: the Blue Points and the Beau Soleils. The funny thing about oysters is that they fill a platter, but in reality they are really kinda small and not filling, so even after we’d each polished off a dozen, we were still hungry. We shared a field green salad that was kinda boring, but at least something green. Then we ordered the calamari- which was really fantastic with a light, crunchy batter and 2 kicky sauces. If our bill wasn’t already creeping up toward the roof, I think we could have easily ordered another dozen oysters but alas, you have to stop at some point.

I’ll be back for sure! Most likely to try some of the other offerings…the tables next to ours were enjoying their tuna tartare, grilled fish, mussels, lobster rolls and pasta dishes immensely and I got the feeling that you can’t really go wrong with anything on the menu. As we chatted with our waiter we learned that  they are the distributors for over 500 restaurants in the NYC area, and it’s no wonder why. Really top-notch seafood. Give them a shot.