The Week of Eating Dangerously: This One Time, At Fish Camp
A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a great article about fried clams, which inspired several hungry colleagues to name their favorite places in the city to get them.
I opened with Trout in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill, which is great and relatively cheap. But for this discussion, we confined ourselves to restaurants on the island.
Someone mentioned Pearl Oyster Bar, but apparently they don't fry their clams.
I lamented the demise of Howard Johnson's, which wins my nostalgia prize for best fried clams ever. (There used to be HoJo's all over Manhattan. Alas, no more.)
Someone else mentioned Bondi Road, but no one had been there.
There was a pause.
"Have you tried Mary's Fish Camp?" someone asked. I shook my head.
"It's so good!"
I made a mental note to go.
Today, my dining companion and I went to camp — we caught a train to Greenwich Village, a pretty, peaceful neighborhood with a street layout that makes no sense. Though we consulted a map at the subway station, we were totally disoriented when we got aboveground and had to ask for directions.
Luckily, the woman we asked knew where we were headed. Minutes later, we were there.
Mary's Fish Camp is one of several New York restaurants with notable women chefs heading up the operation. The space is on the corner and pretty small, maybe 35 seats in all. My friend and I arrived toward the end of lunch service, so it was easy to get a table.
The locally revered lobster roll was on the menu, but I went straight for the fried clams (the bellies are still attached, and you can get the clams without oysters — or oysters without clams — if you ask). Being a little vegetable deficient this week, I also ordered a side of sugar snap peas from the "daily specials" chalkboard. My friend had the pan fried cod sandwich, which came with a big pile of greens.
It was joyous, and the servers were very accommodating, letting us stay a little bit past the lunch close.
Check it out:
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