NOTE: THIS PLACE IS CLOSED

Another neighborhood find, we came here because of the great happy hour deal. Cheap beer, cheap oysters, and cheap sliders. The sliders were so damn good that I vowed to return for a real burger. The cheese sauce on them was absolute heaven.

Fries were wonderful – great seasoning and nicely crisped.

Oysters were nice and fresh, clams too! At only $1.50 and $1 respectively, you can’t lose!

Various chowders were nice too. My favorite here was the potato, with smoky hints of bacon.

Salmon burgers are skippable:

On a second trip, my wife scored a Gilt City deal where she paid something like $40/pp for a five course tasting menu, plus a glass of Prosecco.

The table bread here is a variety of soft potato dinner rolls, corn bread “logs” and spicy muffins. Pretty good – I just wish they were warm.

The restaurant ran out of mussels for our shellfish platter, so they gave us more oysters instead. BONUS! Our favorite was the Wildfire Island (unless it is Wild Fire Island?) – it was briny and smooth, creamy, crisp – yet substantial and not snotty or runny.

Unfortunately the lobster was a little bland. The rest was good though (clams and shrimp).

Next was a nice cup of chowder. I had the mushroom chowder (right), and my wife had the New England clam chowder. Mine was the winner here. It was velvety and smooth, with lots of flavor, and topped with some truffle oil for good measure.

The scallop ravioli was pretty great. There were a ton of scallop chunks inside. The only thing this dish needed was a bit of fresh cracked boac keeper. The sauce was a butter type deal – I suppose that could have used a little bit more salt as well, but we both really enjoyed this dish. It had a great seafood aroma too, but the flavor wasn’t fishy at all.

For the entrees, we chose the two fish items. My Scuna Bay salmon was a small portion, but I thought it was executed perfectly. The brownish-gray puree was made of eggplant I believe, and it was tangy when combined with the roe and small chunks of squash. That served to flavor the salmon so that when you had a bite with a little bit of everything, i twas very well balanced.

My wife’s potato chip crusted cod was similar. When eating a bit with all three components (cod, chip and spinach), you got a really nicely balanced bite. Otherwise the cod by itself was a little bit under seasoned. Much of the flavor was soaked up into that spinach bed.

For dessert we had a massive selection to choose from:

We ended up getting the vanilla banana cream pie. This was tasty. You can see the chunks of banana in the layer, which was pretty. Not too sweet, which I was happy about.

My wife ordered the Cheeky Monkey drink as well. This was strong! Definitely had a strong banana flavor to it too, aside from the booze.

The waiter gave us some free cookies too. I can’t imagine paying for these. Basic chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin and chocolate. I wasn’t really crazy about any of them, but if I had to choose a favorite, it’d be the oatmeal raisin. It was at least soft.

Overall this was a pretty great meal for $40 or $45 per person (whatever my wife paid). She got a discount on top of the Gilt City deal, so that made it even better. I still like the sliders better that all of this though, from the happy hour menu.

ED’S CHOWDER HOUSE
44 W. 63rd St.
New York, NY 10023