Great places to eat oysters in NYC
The dining room of The John Dory Oyster Bar, April Bloomfield's seafood restaurant inside Manhattan's Ace Hotel. Credit: Melissa Hom
So bountiful was the oyster supply in New York Harbor during the late 19th century that the city was the world's largest source of the succulent bivalves. Although their offerings are no longer harvested from the East River, oyster bars retain a cultlike following in the Big Apple today. Four friends and I recently set out to tackle as many New York oyster bars as we could in a day.
"Too bad you came here first," she says. "We're the best. We're the only place that doesn't pre-shuck anything."
I'm not sure about that, but the lunch at Aquagrill will be tough to beat.
Busy counters at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, one of New York's most evenrable seafood establishments. Credit: Handout
At either end of the bar stands an oversize fishbowl containing 100 gallons of water; one is filled with fish from the Atlantic Ocean and the other with specimens from the Pacific.
