Another Friday night without an idea of where to dine, followed by a quick Yelp search lead to dinner at Under the Pier in Levittown. We weren't crazy for the Shrimp King when we went there a few years ago, and wanted seafood, so I called ahead to check on seating, and they advised we come in after 8 PM. That turned out to be good advice as the place was still 75% full when we got there at 8:30. If the place were an actual shack, you'd be able to see a picture of it in the dictionary under "fish shack". Wobbly tables and cheap nautical themes abound, but it wasn't nearly as cheesy as a Joe's Crab Shack, so don't panic. There were just two servers working, but the place is fairly small and they were hustling their butts off getting the orders in and out. We felt a little pressured to get our order in, but it looked to me that a lot of the people eating there didn't even use the menu in the first place and knew what they wanted before sitting themselves down.
We started with New England clam chowder, which was decent and not the thick floury glop that's a real turnoff for me. I like to pretend I'm a harsh judge of clam chowder, and it could have used some bacon and I'm never happy with the amount of clams I get. I ordered fried scallops, which were tender and not over cooked and some pretty good onion rings. My wife ordered a platter with a small lobster tail, a fried crab cake, one fried oyster, a fried clam cake and 2 fried butterflied shrimp. She enjoyed the crab cake, and she really liked the clam cake (I'm not a fan of crab or clam cakes in general). She was too full to eat the shrimps, so I ate them for her and found them to be too bready in the batter. Same thing with the fried oyster.
They also filled up a good portion of the place with their "Sea Chips" which were just French Fried potato slices. If they hadn't put them on the plate, it would have been pretty sparse looking, which is often the case when ordering scallops or oysters in a restaurant.
We'll likely go back because the place was lively, the waitresses were nice (when they weren't careening thru the place), the food was inexpensive and they also served cocktails (a nice surprise!). However, I'll steer away from the fried foods and go for broiled, or, as I saw many others doing, go right after the oysters on the half shell. There were a lot of other plates that looked like they'd have been better choices than the ones we made.
Their website doesn't show up in Yelp's restaurant profile, so here be it: http://www.underthepier.net/ read more