Fish Restaurant Review – Go Often, Go Early

By CS Hsia, on March 28th, 2012

Living and eating in New York is fantastic, a quick glance at Urbanspoon shows over 11,000 restaurants, and I’m sure despite their best efforts the list is nowhere near complete. With a limited budget, when you find something you like, do you keep going back or venture into something new?

In the few years past, I’ve discovered and fallen in love with more than a handful of oyster bars. Each with its own charm and personality. I thought I had finally “settled down” with my choice of seafood restaurants. There’s GCOB in midtown, Flex Mussels uptown, and a Mermaid in both East and West Village.

Then my colleague recommended Fish. Simple name, routinely buried in Google searches but incredibly memorable to people in the know. To make it even more memorable, there’s an ongoing $8 special of 6 Bluepoint oysters and a house drink (wine or PBR). No limits per table, no special happy hour restrictions. Keep in mind that at most restaurants in the city, Bluepoint oysters go for $3 each. I’ve yet to meet a person who doesn’t go “wow” when they hear this for the first time.

If you’re looking for selections because Bluepoints bore you (they’re tasty but really doesn’t have a ton of character), ordering a-la-carte isn’t going to break the bank either. Bluepoints are sold at an astonishing $1.25, and other selections, including fine west coast Kummomoto and Fanny Bay, $2. You’d be hard pressed to get them at this price at a supermarket, here it’s properly shucked and comes with lemons. How much are lemons at whole foods again?

Sampling Fish’s entire selection.

The cooked dishes are quite impressive as well. The fish market soup might not look like a lot, in fact it looked like a boring bowl of tomato soup. Yet it had delicious hints of tartness and just the right amount of heat. If you like the soup, you’ll find a similar flavored broth in the stew, which comes with lobster, mussels, scallops, and quite a bit of garlic and fennel. It taste as good as it sounds.

A bowl of fish soup, with some heat.

An epic seafood stew.

Being a seafood restaurant, I had to get the lobster roll. Some like their rolls neat, others like the heavy mayo and celery, it seems to be a matter of preference, so look at the picture and decide for yourself if this is for you. It was quite a good roll, and came with a heaping portion of fries.

Fish’s lobster roll, heavy on mayo.

Meanwhile, a table of 5 adjacent to us ordered 5 portions of the special twice, and could be well on their way to a third round. 18 oysters, 3 drinks for $24, this alone is reason enough to keep coming back for more. Go often, go early, there’re no reservations and crowds do build up quick.

From the notebook: The special is known as the Red, White and Blue. 6 oysters, or 6 clams, plus a choice of red wine, white wine, or Pabst Blue Ribbon. Keepin’ it classy with a timeless college brew.

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