The Shack Seafood and Oyster Bar

Love, love, love the shack!
We had fried alligator and friend stuffed jalapeños to start with. Both were amazing!!! My husband ordered seafood courtboullion (sp) and I had the crab sampler. The portions were huge. Our server Alex was on point with her recommendations. We will definitely be back :-)
12÷3÷15
We went to the shack again last night ¹²⁄₂ and Alex was our server again. She recommended the chefs special a Smothered Pork Chop with dirty rice and some cream corn. My husband ate the pork chop and cleaned his plate! I ordered the courtboullion and it was fantastic as always. We will be back again soon. Thanks again Alex for you amazing service.

Love this place! Chef was not happy with the blackened flounder, so the GM stopped by our table and it wasn’t five minutes later the food was out and it was perfect!
Blacked Flounder (low fat /​low carb) was a huge fish…1 pound I’d say! $ 22
Crawfish étouffée with a side (I had dirty rice)… $ 13
Bobby our server was attentive, knowledgeable and did a great job!
Highly recommend this place for Cajun food and wish they would build a store in Tulsa!

The Shack used to be outstanding. Recently, though, they eliminated about ¹⁄₃ of their menu. They did retain the wide variety of breaded & fried crap. Congratulations, now you’re right up there with Long John Silver’s!
The star of The Shack since they opened the first location near 63^rd & Broadway in OKC has always been their grilled oysters. The oysters are still on the menu, and they are still creative and delicious. However, the menu change included more than doubling the price of the oysters and eliminating the option to mix & match. Now you can order no less than ½ doz. of any particular recipe, and you get to pay through the nose.
The environment is matched to the restaurant name. Although The Shack is supposed to serve a mainly Creole menu, the décor is redneck-​cajun. It certainly stands out like an abcess sitting just down the street from BJ’s and Charlston’s.
I recommended The Shack for several years, but now I would suggest choosing Red Lobster instead. Sad changes.

I’ve been here 3 times now, and really like the food. The atmosphere is uncomfortable with loud TVs, mostly one big open space with tables so sound carries, and the chairs are not too comfortable. But the food is pretty good. I’ve had a variety of items, and most have been great. The red beans and rice have a nice kick I wasn’t expecting from a restaurant like this. The fish is fresh and seasonings are not too salty. The wait staff is not that great, and is kinda of slow. It’s only mediocre compared to the real deal in New Orleans, bu given there are almost no Cajun options in the metro, it’s not a bad substitute for driving to the city.

Here’s the problem, if you cannot fry things then shut down. You’re in Norman and you can’t even make decent catfish. Some of their items are okay but overall they don’t seem to know much about cooking food properly. I’m guessing their chef likes it and doesn’t really care what others think about his food. The seafood stew is great, anything else that I have tried was horrible.

Tried this place for the first time since living in Norman for the past three years. I’ve always had an ominous feeling about this place since seeing the building and sign itself – didn’t impress me.
They do a special offer for OU faculty, staff, & students where if you show them your OU ID you’ll get your choice of a free bowl of gumbo. I chose the seafood gumbo along with a side Caesar salad, and fried okra. The gumbo was honestly just boiled sewage water – at least that’s what it looked like. Smelled absolutely HORRIBLE and had the consistency of water. There were pathetic pieces of what looked like shrimp and crab sitting on the bottom of the bowl. Looked like it had been taken from a can and tossed in the soup base. Tasted awful… I was seriously disappointed and wanted to throw it back towards the kitchen. I settled for setting it to the side. The salad wasn’t impressive, their sauce is too strong and the fried okra wasn’t great but their horseradish/​mustard sauce on the side was quite delicious.
All in all, I’d rather eat a frozen TV dinner than come back to this place and be disappointed again. Service was subpar and the bartender even put olives inside of a top-​shelf margarita.
The Shack, can you please get your shit together or just CLOSE YOUR DOORS?!

I have been wanting to try the brunch at The Shack for some time. Now that I have, it’s time to update my review, and, unfortunately, drop The Shack a star.
We arrived around noon with a table of 4 adults and my 4 year old son. Everyone, except my boy, ordered off of the brunch menu. I went with the canal street sandwich. This is sourdough bread with blackened Canadian bacon, bacon, eggs, cheese, onion, and what looked like mayo but added nothing in the way of flavor. The toast was cold. Not ice cold, but lower than room temperature. Additionally, the bottom piece was soggy. This indicates to me that the plate had been sitting for a few minutes. The eggs were overcooked by at least 2 minutes. This was a problem that everyone complained of at the table. The Canadian bacon was good, I didn’t get much blackened flavor, but I like Canadian bacon just fine. This sandwich is large, but that still doesn’t make it worth the $ 9.99 menu price. You can make this at home.
You get your choice of potatoes with the sandwich: Shack potatoes (which are basically home fries) or red potato hash. The server advised us to go with Shack potatoes, so that’s what I did. I would describe these as home fries made by a lazy person. The chunks of potato are enormous. Each one needed to be cut in half, and some of them thirds to become manageable. Same with the slices of pepper and onion. Had these been properly diced it might have been a good dish, but the large slices made the dish difficult to eat. Additionally, I got no seasoning from the dish, and potatoes need seasoning in the worst way. I would not re-​order these.
The reason I am giving 3 instead of 2 stars for the brunch is the biscuits with andouille sausage gravy. The biscuits are traditional and fluffy. In contrast to the toast, they were piping hot. The gravy lacked seasoning, but once you added salt and pepper it was a solid cream gravy. It’s not so good that were I to return on a weekend day I would get this over a catfish po’ boy, but the biscuits and gravy were easily the best thing we ate this morning.
My previous review stands. I have enjoyed just about every lunch or dinner I’ve had at The Shack. But, I can’t say the same for the brunch. I’ll absolutely be back, maybe as soon as next week, but I won’t order off the back of the menu again.

Food was OK. Fries were cold. Crawfish were not fresh boiled. Small portions. Joe was more interested in TV than customers.

At first, I absolutely loved this restaurant. It’s a Cajun «themed» restaurant… I say «themed» because if you were a true Cajun there would be no way it was spicy enough for you, and you would freak the moment you saw no okra in the gumbo. But that said, the food itself was really good and had a great flavor to it. However, my last visit it seemed they had started to purchase cheaper ingredients causing the flavors to become more dull to what I had become accustomed to. I’m giving this place 4 stars in hopes that this was just a bad shipment and they will be going back to their better ingredients. Otherwise, I would have easily given this place a 5 star rating hands down.

Stopped here on recent trip home from Kansas City. The customer service was amazing. The food was excellent. The atmosphere was cool. This will be my dining stop on my road trips to and from Kansas City in the future.

I hate to do this, but must be honest to the one person they may possibly read this review. Good beverage choices, great crawfish gumbo, service a little lacking and everything else on the menu we tried was all but good. Shrimp tasted as it had been freezer burnt, Oyster Po-​Boy was Po and the fresh French bread tasted as if it was shipped from France a month ago…
Atmosphere was a little creepy with the high school girls standing around the bar sneaking sips the Cozmo the bar tender «accidently» messed up on while taking selfies of themselves. Staff was very friendly, but versus standing around with three to five in a group, would suggest a good cleaning on the floors under the bar as our feet stuck to the ground coming and going.
Next time we start missing New Orleans we may give it one more shot, but will probably stick to the Raw Oysters and Cold Bita Amber.

My family and I decided to stop by here after a day at the Norman Medieval Festival. We were all kind of in the mood for seafood and I’d heard great reviews from my friends, but I was a little skeptical considering my family is from Alaska and our expectations are fairly high for seafood.
Appetizers:
Dozen raw oysters: I don’t eat them, but my mom and dad do. They both said that they were very good, and finished the dozen quickly. After some discussion about whether or not they are cracked immediately before serving, I began to notice that they doused every single oyster with lemon, a hefty spoonful of cocktail sauce, and a smearing of horseradish spicy enough to clear your sinuses. Now, this might be because they just prefer that kind of thing, or that the oysters were slightly lacking in the flavor department.
Alligator tail: My husband and I had this. I think I would have preferred it blackened, but they only served it fried with a bowl of their creamy gravy on the side. I’m not saying it was bad (because it wasn’t) but it definitely wasn’t my style.
Entrees:
Fried catfish: Meh. My husband basically did a shoulder shrug when I asked him how he liked it. The platter came with two fillets and he only finished one.
Fish tacos: My dad and I both had this entrée. The fish tacos were really good, but I ended up adding hot sauce to the already blackened tilapia because it didn’t have any real heat to it. The side potatoes… We were expecting home fries, but ended up with a couple quartered potatoes and a sad attempt at frying them up with some peppers.
Lobster Sampler: I’m sure I’m getting the name wrong, but this was definitely the favorite dish at the table. The lobster pie was unlike anything I’d ever had before, and ohhhhhh my the lobster bisque. It reminded us of Alaska.
My advice: Make sure to go over the menu and find out what’s fresh and what’s going to suit your palette best. And be sure to get the lobster bisque!

I just love this place! The seafood courtbouillon is amazing! It’s loaded with shrimp, scallops, and other seafood. I have had the stuffed snapper (be sure to top with the courtbouillon). I have been many times and have yet to have a bad meal. The total restaurant has improved tremendously in the last 3 months.

This place is okay and it does hit the spot when I’m craving it, but at this point my dad is the only person who will willingly return with me and that’s for the dirty rice and crawfish étouffée.
My first time there I had one of their oyster plates and it wasn’t great. Covered in cheese and just not a good flavor at all. Went back again and had the crab bisque. That was very tasty. Most recently I had the shrimp po’boy. Shrimp was room temp, there wasn’t much sauce on the sandwich, and the already thick, tough bread was more difficult to eat because of that. The homemade chips were good, but I thought they were a little overseasoned. My dad’s food arrived barely warm. He informed the waiter and there was no move made to rectify the situation, instead the waiter just said, «I’ll be sure to pass that along in the kitchen.»
For the quality of food you get, it seems really overpriced.

Ate here for Valentines date night. I was worried since they don’t take reservations but we really didn’t face to wait. We had smoked oysters and they were quite good. We also had crab stuffed jalapeños. Pretty yummy and low on calories.
I had the seafood court bouillon. Very delicious and very large servings. Hubby had the blackened mahi. He said it was really delicious.
I was a little disappointed in the wait staff. The waiter didn’t bring us a drink menu and was gone for long periods of time. He seemed distracted. The wine I ordered seemed kind of funky, but the waiter never came by to check or ask.

We ordered fried oyster a la cart and the kitchen sink crawfish. It is very very good! Oysters were perfectly fried, crispy on the outside but still retained the juiciness! The crawfish was cooked pretty good, however there were quite a few dead ones. But it is expected because it was Saturday and we are in OK, was blessed enough to have live cooked crawfish! I would come back again for these two items.

This is the second time to this restaurant chain. Both times the food has been really good. I had the soft shell crab po’boy and the homemade chips, they were both very good. The service was ok our serve did not look like she worked here however with the way she was dressed. Beyond parents not controlling their children the atmosphere for the restaurant was nice and inviting.

The food was delicious. I ordered the grilled seafood platter. It came with delicious grilled catfish, shrimp, a frog leg, oysters, and a crab cake. It also came with a delicious side of fresh grilled green beans (my favorite part of the meal besides the catfish!)
Don’t order anything with oysters though because they tasted very strange. I told our server that the oysters had an unusual taste but she didn’t seem to care. I was hoping to exchange them for something else but she (waitress Jazmyne) didn’t even offer anything. I’m not really big on complaining but I prefaced my remarks with «everything was really wonderful» but you win some and you lose some.
I definitely would recommend this place.
–Don’t order the oysters
–Not the best service

Wanted to love it, but only kind of liked it.
Great service. BTW, denizens of Norman, if you want a seat at a west side restaurant, go on Second Friday while everyone is downtown.
Ordered an F5 IPA. The keg tasted really, really old. So old that it was a touch flat and the signature F5 hoppy/​pine cone Aspen adventure was more like a rusty carousel in an abandoned Detroit playground. I don’t trust the beer program here. You shouldn’t either.
We had the fried jambalaya boullettes (sp?) as an appetizer. It comes with remoulade. Their remoulade isn’t like NOLA; it is more like coarse ground mustard. It is good, actually. But not what you would guess. The appetizer was good.
We then split the fried shrimp platter with fries, and an extreme side of red beans and rice and a side of hush puppies. Fried shrimp were very, very good. Buttetflied, nicely breaded. Fries were good. Hush puppies were great. I thought the red beans and rice were a little bland, but there was plenty of sausage in there and my wife really enjoyed it.
Everything here is about $ 3 too much, IMO. We won’t rush back. Also, totally random, but there was some tacky hokey signage around the bar area that really didn’t fit what was otherwise a family place. Kids could see and read it. (In that regard, none of the décor was very good.)

Most menu items are $ 10 or more.
We ordered: Bacon Wrapped Shrimp *delicious*, Crab stuffed Jalapeño, Calamari *delicious*, Oysters Brent, Blackened Mahi *over cooked/​dry*, Crab Sampler *delicious*, Key Lime Pie.
Service was very good. Servers are polite and attentive. Lots of team work expediting food and clearing tables. Very busy night. One to go order was «accidentally» brought to the table instead of boxed.
Then 3 hours later, my daughter is very sick. Still sick this morning.