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Oyster battle coming to North End street

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports that Neptune Oyster on Salem Street could soon get competition from a new oyster place across the street whose lawyer describes it as "maybe a Neptune Oyster on steroids."

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"maybe a Neptune Oyster on steroids."

Yeah, that sounds real appetizing.

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Drugs found in Puget Sound salmon from tainted wastewater:

Puget Sound salmon are on drugs - Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor, even cocaine.

Those drugs and dozens of others are showing up in the tissues of juvenile chinook, researchers have found, thanks to tainted wastewater discharge.

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maybe they just sampled a depressed, allergy suffering, drug addict salmon with high cholesterol and a headache. It happens

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"maybe a Neptune Oyster on steroids."

So an artificially created version that mostly makes you angry? Sound like a cool spot...

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Rabia's next door to Neptune opened an oyster bar to siphon off tourists who aren't patient enough to wait for a seat at Neptune. Frank DiPasquale opened his own poor knockoff, Mare, over on Hanover Street.

Neither of them holds a candle to Neptune, nor has put a dent in its crowds, and I'm not optimistic that North End Oyster will be any different. That's because Neptune was the first local seafood place in Boston that didn't actually belie our reputation as a city with great seafood restaurants, and it remains awesome to this day, even if its popularity and lack of reservations make it a pain in the ass to get a seat. It's a rare no-reservations place in Boston where I'll put up with the mobs or visit at weird hours for its food (Toro is another.)

Before Neptune, I used to send visitors who wanted excellent local seafood to one of Chinatown's Hong Kong style live-tank seafood joints like Peach Farm. Fortunately, a bunch of other equally worthy New England seafood places have opened in Neptune's wake.

If you can't abide the wait at Neptune, don't settle for the North End's second-raters. Get a reservation at Select Oyster, Row 34 or Island Creek Oyster Bar instead.

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The sad thing is many people who go out to eat in the North End don't really care about the quality of their food and so neither do many of the restaurant owners in the neighborhood.

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I imagine most people who dine in the North End and the restaurateurs who serve them actually care. It's just that your (and my) idea of what constitutes worthwhile dining doesn't include what most of the North End serves, what I call "Jersey Shore Italian": the immigrant cuisine of Sicilian and Campanian immigrants to these shores in the late 19th-century that has undergone 100 years of adaptation to local ingredients and tastes.

It is what it is, and what it is is something that a huge chunk of the dining public likes: familiar, unchallenging red-sauce dishes in big portions for the money. Hordes of locals and tourists alike crowd Mike's, which prefills its cannoli, a damnable sin, ignoring the clearly superior Maria's and The Modern. People line up for the Cheesecake Factory, too, and take umbrage when a Globe reviewer correctly skewers the god-awful Union Oyster House as an execrable tourist trap.

I agree that there are some North End operators who are miserable crooks: price-gouging (watch out for those daily specials with the unspecified prices), refusing to serve anything but bottled water, etc. I don't care for turn-and-burn shops, either: no reservations, no liquor, no dessert, and they drop your check with the entree. Some of the marketing is hilariously awful, like Nick Varano's ring-a-ding-swinging third-rate Sopranos-wannabe shtick.

But even beyond the eight or so N. End restaurants I actually like (most of which do some slightly Americanized version of more contemporary traditional Italian regional cuisines), I think most operators are earnest businesspeople giving their customers what they want. It's just that there's no accounting for taste, especially mass taste.

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and forgot about the old "we only have bottled water" scam at Il Panino. Well, what do you wash your dishes with? How come your 2 other restaurants a block away can serve tap water when they're owned by the same guy?

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Just call it Italian American food, or Red Sauce, like you already did. It

It is very good when it is prepared well at a decent restaurant.

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I sincerely hope you are kidding about sending people to Peach Farm!! Clearly you do not go out to eat in Boston or maybe not at all

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And I do dine out in Boston now and again.

I agree that it's not a place to order The General, even though I frequently see white people doing that there. But it does fantastic live-tank seafood and very good traditional Cantonese cuisine.

What's your idea of good Chinese food, TDK?

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By MC Slim JB on Thu, 04/14/2016 - 12:59pm
And I do dine out in Boston now and again.

I dont believe you one bit. prove it...
/sarcasm (but feel free to prove it anyway for others that dont know)

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of the week, and he and his brothers sing the praises of a lot of terrible restaurants (that just happen to sponsor his TV show or pay the graft to his Beacon Hill lobby). I don't consider it a useful measure of how much you know.

As a restaurant critic, whether a pro or a Yelp reviewer, you only have as much authority as readers are willing to grant you, usually based on some combination of trust in your ethics, apparent knowledge, and above all, shared sensibilities (you and I like and hate the same kind of places). It's not about how many times a year you dine out, what your ancestry is, where you've traveled, how much time you've spent working in restaurants, etc., though those things can add tools to your bag. The greatest food writer in the country, J. Gold of the LA Times, came up as an art and music critic.

In any event, I imagine a lot of my readers often disagree with me, but enjoy my writing and gusto for the task. I stand by the thoroughness of my research and accuracy in reporting, but otherwise, it's just my opinion; I never make any pretensions to authority. TDK is perfectly entitled to think Peach Farm sucks; I'm just curious what s/he prefers (because maybe there's a good tip for me there.)

I don't blog much, but here's a piece I did on how amateurs can write reviews more like the pros do; it's also about being a critical consumer of online opinions.

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But I'd trust your word about a restaurant any day over the Andelman Brothers' word(s)

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like saying, "Compared to that unspeakable, disease-ridden whore over there on the street corner, you seem pretty clean."

(But I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless.)

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That's not what I meant. I just find your reviews to be better, and not slanted. I know if I go to a place you review and recommend, It's going to be decent.

I can't say that for so many (bad) places I've gone to after seeing them on the Phantom Gourmet... too many bad ones that they gave great reviews to, and not many good ones. They way over hype the bad ones too much.

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strap on their kneepads for any restaurant willing to shell out five bucks has been a sometime hobby of mine since at least 2009, when I created a drinking game for watching their TV show.

I do appreciate your kind words!

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Keep up the good work!

I just stopped watching after I realized it was just a scam for their advertisers and the reviews were trash.

Of course, after the 1st BBQ Beach Party I went to.. which is a disaster of an event (who charges an admission price, then charges each PER sample?!?). I was like.. "okay these folks are just scam artists looking to make bank". I was done after that.

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I put it at five years. Being the Emperor of Ten-Cent Wings, Powdered Donuts and Ooey-Gooey Smothered-with-Cheese Chicken Parm isn't enough.

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Considering I have a friend who has enough facebook, twitter, and yelp screen shots of him annihilating posters or people who he doesn't agree with (when it concerns his show, any review he's done, or the Mendon Twin).

I give it even less time than that before he digs his own hole... Maybe two..

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He has blocked me and several of my food-writer friends from Phantom Facebook and Twitter feeds for mocking or challenging him.

Another tangerine-toned child of privilege with frightful hair who likes to dish it out online but turns into a whiner when someone dishes back.

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You're kidding, right?
McSlim is a well respected restaurant reviewer. Pretty sure he knows more about dining out in Boston than most. That and on any given night you can find tables full of some of the best chefs in town chowing down. Yup, you know what you're talking about.

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I totally agree with MC Slim's assessment. The new owner (who seems to be the same as the old owner) is unclear on the concept. One of the appealing things about Neptune Oyster is that it is not “on steroids.” However, this venture is typical of the majority of North End establishments which confuse quality and quantity. This is why they are mostly patronized by tourists and other one-time visitors.

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....like on Richmond street? Or am I thinking of a different place.

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It moved to Hanover this summer

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