A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

Island Creek Oysters are based out of Duxbury, Massachusetts and their new restaurant in the Hotel Commonwealth helps them spotlight (and highlight) their brand.

Island Creek Oyster Bar is located in the old space that Great Bay used to occupy. The space is pretty large and open. The front area has a bar (and lounge, ie: high top tables) that wraps around into the main dining area (see above).

The place was pretty quite on a Monday evening which was nice. I read various reviews that said that the noise level from the bar spilled over into the main dining area, making it hard to hear across the table.

We start with the no shell Snug Harbor Pei mussels with white wine, garlic, shallots and parsley ($10). I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it. That’s not a bad thing. When it came out, it reminded me of bubble tea. There were little cous cous type pastas inside the broth. The mussels were tasty-instead of eating it with the toast that came with the dish, we used the fresh sour dough bread from our bread basket (which was made in house, along with the house made butter with honey and spice).

Then we split the scallops with two kinds of mushrooms ($29). The scallops were cooked to perfection-super buttery smooth inside and slightly salty.

And split the tile fish with roasted cauliflower ($26). The plating was beautiful-you almost wanted to admire it more than eat it….almost. The tile fish is a white fish, light, sort of the consistency of a bass. I love roasted cauliflower, this had an excellent flavor to it-almost nutty and salty. This dish is so simple and it allowed for the tastes of the fish and the cauliflower to really shine.

The drink menu was small, and a lot of the choices were made with spices that I dont think you would find in most drinks-allspice, fennel, and elderflower to name a few.

There is no menu online, it changes often, but to see a sample go to menupages or urbanspoon (click on the pdf). The service was good-but was that because there were almost as many servers on as there were guests? When we asked our server for suggestions, she said the scallops and the tile fish but then recited the exact wording on the menu, and adding a ‘lovely’ here and there. I want to know why you like it, for instance, I like the tilefish because it’s light and not fishy, or I love the scallops because they melt like butter. What I don’t want is, I like the scallops, they come with two types o of mushrooms. Perhaps Monday isn’t the day when they put their A-game servers on. That being said, the food was excellent, we would definitely go back.

Island Creek Oyster Bar

500 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

617.532.5300

http://www.islandcreekoysterbar.com/

Tags: fenway, restaurant, seafood