Fire Island Foods

I would like to welcome myself back to my food blog. I have taken a bit of a break in an effort to plan my friend's bachelor party which took place this past week in Fire Island. For those of you who do not know, Fire Island is a fairly remote island off the south coast of Long Island. It truly is one of the most relaxing places I have ever been which can probably in some part, be attributed to the fact there are no cars on the island.

I am going to change up the structure of the blog for this entry as I am going to take a look at all the various eateries I went to while on this vacation instead of focusing on just one.

The food adventure started when we arrived at the dock to board the ferry. There is a small establishment called Nick's Clam Shack. I made one trip out to the island a few days prior to the bachelor party in order to orient myself and set up some of the fun. That being the case, after the long train ride out to the dock, I was naturally hungry on both occasions and Nick's is the only place to eat near the ferries. After reviewing the menu for quite a while (because I can never make up my mind when it comes to food), I oddly got the chicken fries. Now you probably wonder at a good fish restaurant, why I would get essentially differently titled chicken tenders. The plate they brought out had to have had about 50 chicken fries and this was only the appetizer portion. I have to say, they were really delicious. They were even good enough to order again the second time I went back to the island to attend the bachelor party and I got all my friends to order them as well and they were no letdown. On a side note, my friend I was with the first time got the shrimp salad sandwich and aside from also being huge, it was almost all hearty, high quality shrimps and very little salad. Certainly a good bang for your buck.

Because we were on a tight budget and also had a boat load of food at the house we rented, we only went out for 2 real meals but they are worth talking about.

We organized one big dinner out and it brought us to Maguires. Thursday nights are the ever famous Lobsterpalooza. We couldn't resist! For those who were not into Lobster, one also had the option to order prime rib. Although the "palooza" term usually implies it is all you can eat, this was not. If you ordered the lobster, you got a 1.25 lb lobster. Enough food but I wanted to throw that out there to provide fair warning. In addition, you also got a side salad and some soup. I could have done without the soup and salad but was worth having it for a few bites and also added value to the meal. The lobster was delicious and there were about 7 of us in total who ordered the lobster and I think would agree. Although I did not try the prime rib, it looked good and got rave reviews.

Our final meal was on Saturday at the Island Mermaid where we had lunch. It is unfortunate that this had to be our last meal because it was below par, especially given the high prices. I figured I should enjoy fresh fish one last time on this island since is a specialty of all the restaurants but this decision was not a good one. I got the lobster roll and you need high quality meat to make this worth while. The meat SUCKED. It was small morsels of lobster and they didn't give you any part of the tail section which is obviously the best part. It almost seemed like it was equal to what a crab stick would be like compared to real crab meat. The cost was also about $20 so I was upset to say the least. Two of my friends got crab cakes and did enjoy them. One other friend of mine got lox and bagels and the lox honestly was brownish in spots and looked rotten. All-in-all, this was not a good meal.

I hope this provides you with a quick snapshot of the dining experience on the Ocean Beach section of Fire Island.

Stay hungry my friends.