Canterbury’s Oyster Bar & Grill

Tasty food. HORRIBLE SERVICE.
Stopped in for a bite with my co-​worker yesterday. What a mistake. Our waitress was dazed, disheveled and inattentive. She reeked of booze and was obviously hungover. Never again.

Great meeting spot, many great meals and friendly staff. Always something new and enjoyable. We have been going to Canterbury’s for the last 20 years and have enjoyed it each time. Highly recommended!

We were the first patrons that Saturday morning, but we were welcomed by very friendly and laid back (in a good way) staff.
Lots of seafood options, as expected, and we were very happy with everything we ordered, which included the Clam & Corn Chowder (thick and generous), Baked Clams Oreganata (various sizes but overall very solid), Crispy Cornmeal Crusted Oysters-​N-​Chips (crunchy and fresh), and Fresh Steamers (I’m never a big fan of steamers, but the wife loved them!).
Definitely coming back whenever we’re in the area.

Canterburys has been around forever, not really sure why I haven’t been here in ages, but we visited last week. We stopped for lunch, weren’t really interested in the lunch menu, so we decided to split a dinner entrée and a bowl of the chowder. Chowder was delicious, creamy, not pasty, which we run into sometimes. The menu seems to be huge, I really don’t see the need for so many items, this tells me that nothing is particularly special. We were looking for a light fish dish, and we found one: St. Peters fish Piccata… Lemon, wine, capers, butter, tomatoes, Israeli couscous, grilled vegetables. It was good, St. Peters Fish is Tilapia with a fancy name. The waitress brought it to us on 2 plates, which I thought was nice, we get alot of eye-​rolling when we split meals. I was stuck between 3 and 4 stars, adn will give Canterburys the benefit of the doubt. 4 stars it is, we had a lovely dining experience. Plenty for 2 for lunch, soup and a couple of nice big iced teas for under $ 35 tip included.

Awful, awful, awful, awful experience.
Where do I even begin?
My fiancé and I arrived for lunch after our boat tour of Oyster Bay and as part of their promotion, we were offered a 15% coupon to Canterbury’s Oyster Bar & Grill. Our excitement soon turned to a horrible experience…
My fiancé had an avocado dish which really looked like a cracker smeared in store bought pre-​made avocado spread covered in canned corn and canned beans. No flavor and brittle as if it were left over from the previous night. The look on her face said it all. She looked shocked.
I had the «the great burrito with steak» and boy oh boy was a awful. It arrived cold, the steak was like chewing into rubber tire even though cooked mid-​well, and the rice tasted old. I immediately felt ill and refused to eat the second half of this wrap.
Service you ask? Awful. I waited twice over 10 minutes each time to get a coke (at $ 2.50 a pop mind you). I’d rather pay someone $ 2.50 to vomit on me rather than experience the service from this place again.
The bussboy sat behind me in his station are started ripping paper table clothes and working loudly to the point where i had to ask our waitress «can he wait till after we leave? it’s disrupting». She looked at me and said «can you ask him?». Yes. The waitress asked me to ask her bussboy to cease from making noise and disturbing us during our meal.
Pricing? Overpriced. We will never go back and will do our part to spread the word to any of our friends and family to avoid this place. The Carvel on the corner probably exceeds every element of what Canterbury’s Oyster Bar & Grill has to offer.
We were disgusted and look back on it as a smudge to our wonderful weekend. Actually, we had dinner in Huntington at La Piazza on Sunday (a great Italian restaurant by the way) and remarked at how the complimentary water tasted better than our food from Canterbury’s Oyster Bar & Grill.
Avoid at all costs… unless you hate your life and crave disappointment, or better yet, you’ve lived a wonderful life and wanted to live dangerously by balancing nausea and family time.

With «Oyster» in the name, you’d think that MAYBE they’d have some decent oysters and MAYBE even a decent selection.
NONE of the above. $ 17.95 for 6 oysters that were small and on a half of a half shell. Broken when shucking or broken before they were shucked?
Clams were the typical frozen and shucked bland things everyone serves.
Oyster Po’ Boy BLT was a LOT of bread, very little filling and no oysters.
skimpy pints of beer only insult more.
Bill came in at over $ 60 each for not anything all that good.
We will NOT be back.

Zero Stars. We were asked politely to leave. On a Saturday night we walked in without a reservation and initially we were told they would be able to seat us if we were willing to wait a few minutes. We were. After a short time a staff person approached me and told me their was nothing he could do for us. Seriously? How rude! They don’t deserve my business or yours.

Everything about this place is GREAT!
The Food, The Ambiance and The Staff are all amazing.
The menu has an incredible selection to choose from and the staff are friendly and attentive. The bar area is separated from the restaurant which makes it conversation friendly! The Ambiance is charming and quaint.

I’ll give three stars because I hear the food here is excellent. We came in on a Saturday night from across the parking lot from Oyster Bay Brewing Company and grabbed a high top table near the front, next to the bar.
We stayed for a couple of rounds of drinks and were laughing hysterically (read: drunkenly) at some of the books that were strewn casually about. A 1000±page pre-​WWII biography of Winston Churchill. A Cliffs-​Notes-​ish book from the 50s. A hilariously sexist/​creepy book on Body Language from 1970. We provided our own fun to distract us from the very classy couple furiously making out not five feeet from my friend’s head. If it was the 90’s, I’d tell the décor in this place that «If you love Teddy Roosevelt so much, why don’t you marry him?»
From there we were greeted by our waiter who handed us their iPad with their drink (and supposedly Dessert) selections on it.
I will review the iPad as if it were our gender-​neutral server, because after our first round, our humanoid server was nowhere to be found:
Our waiter was slow and unresponsive. They seemed to be confused when I asked to hear about what they had on tap after asking about domestic and then international bottles, as if buffering from a large database. While their knowledge of the breadth of the massive beer list was impressive, their suggestions seemed unreliable and kind of off. The beer they convinced me to try was much more bitter than their description of it made me believe, and it was pretty expensive. Their knowledge of the dessert menu was lacking, as I was met with a blank face upon asking.
On the bright side, our waiter’s battery was well above 60%.

Honestly I was super disappointed in the meal. I used to go to this once gem back in the 80’s. Back then it was awesome — good food, good drink, great vibe.
Now — well the staff is nice – but it seems like they are trying to upcreep to a more upscale ambiance. The burgers are priced right at a base of $ 8.50 but my chicken tenders came room temperature (gross). Bathroom didn’t seem to have warm /​hot water for hand washing but it was clean and did have soap and towels.
The bus help totally rushed us — and they (pub) were not packed — -even our waitress /​server didn’t hover but the bus crew literally made us feel uncomfortable with their hovering.
I will go back to sit at the bar to see if its a better experience (I really hope so).
PS — 4−5 stars on beer selection — very impressive for a local pub.
Cheers

Attentive server. Very good selection of beer, for those who imbibe. Nice, well prepared food for reasonable prices. Historically interesting representation of old time Oyster Bay and it’s most famous resident, Teddy Roosevelt.
The drinks were great! The oysters lobsterfella were yummy and fresh as were the seafood items from the raw bar. All the entrees we had got the nod of approval. We saved half of our dinner so that we could have dessert. Desserts were ordinary so next time I would finish my entrée! All of the fish dishes are nicely prepared and very fresh and flavorful.

The first time I came here, which is probably 2 years ago, we found this restaurant by accident, but it turned out to be a pretty awesome dinner. Second time here, I got a voucher from Living Social and decided to come on Father’s day. Luckily I called to make a reservation and learn that the voucher cannot be used on Father’s day.
For appetizers, we ordered the Flash Fried Oysters and Oysters Lobsterfella. Fried Oysters is okay, but the Oysters Lobsterfella are amazing, it’s a MUST ORDER item here. I ordered the «Fish Bowl», srhimp & lobster & scallop over lo mein. My family ordered Filet Mignon with Grilled Shrimp and some Fried Seafood Platter. My father thinks the Filet Mignon can be heavier flavored. Seafood Platter includes Fish Filet, clam strips, scallops and shrimp. All the dishes are big portions. Food is generally pretty good here, but we all think the fries are overcooked, so avoid the fries if you can.
With the voucher used, We spent about $ 130 (including tips) for 5 people, pretty affordable for a whole seafood dinner.

Very nice little place. They have a good beer selection. We had the crab cakes and a flat bread and both were very good. Service was quick and friendly.