Boston - February 28, 2005

Aw, Shucks

Neptune Oyster Restaurant Opens

Another seafood restaurant? In Boston? You don’t say.

These days, seems like we’ve got more new — and newfangled — sea-obsessed menus in our midst than The Charles has pollutants. Everybody and their sous-chef wants a piece of the updated and modernized clam shack action.

That’s why we can’t help but get all Pollyannaish about Neptune Oyster — mainly because it doesn’t try so hard. It’s a small and simple, old-school oyster bar (penny-round tile floors, red banquettes) like the kind that used to pepper the North End. Think the Oyster Bar in Grand Central or Acme Oyster in New Orleans, and you start to get the picture. Neptune takes its shellfish just as seriously: Daily deliveries of oysters from near (Wellfleet and Bluepoint) and far (Windy Bay from Alaska and Kumamoto) are posted in grease pencil on the mirrored bar.

Proof that every now and then, the most traditional newcomer is the best catch of all.

Neptune Oyster, 63 Salem Street, between Cross and Stillman Streets, North End (617-742-3474).