As summer winds down, it’s time to make sure you’ve eaten your fill of one of the season’s greatest pleasures: seafood sandwiches. Whether the seafood in question is oysters, lobster, shrimp, or scallops, be it fried, steamed, sauteed, or broiled, the sweet meat encased in pillowy bread just tastes like summer. As summer wanes, here are four sandwiches with which to celebrate the seafood season in New York.
At the Red Hook Lobster Pound, the lobster is trucked in from Maine on the daily. This fastidious attention to sourcing won’t reduce your food miles, but it will give you screamingly fresh, tender, sweet lobster rolls. Unlike some purveyors, Red Hook isn’t stingy with the lobster, which comes in both Maine (cold with mayonnaise) and Connecticut (hot with butter) styles. For those who don’t want to schlep to Red Hook (read: most people), the rolls are also available from the roving Lobster Truck.
It’s no surprise that New Orleans, with its year-round summer temperatures, makes a mean seafood sandwich in the shrimp po’ boy. Get your fix at Tchoup Shop, a pop-up open each Sunday in the backyard of d.b.a. Soft bread is smeared with scallion mayonnaise and piled high with cabbage, pickles, and a generous portion of fried shrimp. Listen – as you bite in, you can almost hear a second line in the distance.
New York’s best oyster sandwich might also be its smallest: the Little Oyster Sandwich at The Dutch. Andrew Carmellini stuffs brioche slider buns with iceberg lettuce, fried oysters dusted with cornmeal, cayenne, and paprika, and a tangy pickled okra sauce for a mouthful that’s rich, briny, and completely addictive. They come just one to an order – you’re going to want at least three.
