Pearl Oyster Bar

Pearl Oyster Bar in New York City has closed. It was a gem of a New York restaurant with class and style. And it was better than your favorite restaurant. Walk with my memories and you’ll find out why. 

There is Cornelia Street. Have you walked down it? It is a perfect New York street between a once amazing Bleecker and always dead West 4th. In the past, I used to have to wait for a table at Pearl so I’d get a slice at Bleecker Street Pizza before it changed owners. More recently, I’d just stand on Cornelia talking shit with Jenny. I love how it’s a fairly quiet street despite being surrounded by 6th Ave and Bleecker with its hordes of tourists.

For lunch it’s the bar, and for dinner it’s a table. I’m thoroughly antisocial when it comes to lunch at restaurants. Just give me a bowl of chowder, my Po boy, and a pint of beer, and I got somewhere to be. The staff have always seemed to understand this. Maybe I’m a dime a dozen, or they can simply read people. Honestly, for most of its operation, at best I came once a month. I was still young and exploring the food scene in the city. Once I settled and the food scene started to die off, I came more frequently. Once the whole covid scene lightened up, we came once every other week. One of our motivations was to support it so it may not go out of business. As a lapsed Buddhist, it is a reminder that most endeavors are fleeting. 

I’m not a lobster roll guy though. That is Jenny’s domain. My go to was half a dozen oysters, a whole fish, a glass of something white, and mousse. Hers was the johnnycake, roll, and her own mousse, otherwise we fight. Their lobster bisque was “fuck you, Ripert”, and their gazpacho was unrefined but belly warming. Maybe there were cod fritters, soft shell somethings, and a pie rotating around, but Black Sea Bass was always my center piece. Oh shit, I forgot the scallops. If they didn’t have the sea bass and I wasn’t in the mood for a roll, I’d get the scallops. I never had to worry about what to order. 

All this sounds very standard, or it does to me. But the whole picture of the restaurant was grand. And a few little parts made sure of it:

You can’t be anything if you aren’t consistent;

It doesn’t matter if you aren’t plain;

Your heart has to be sincere. 

Pearl Oyster Bar was wildly consistent from the year I started going there out of culinary school(2006) until now. Many of the employees were the same (shoutout to that one line cook that is a Devils fan), the food you could set your watch, and the prices were fairly stable. The food wasn’t cheap, but in my experience it was always worth the price considering how much crap is in New York. Maybe consistency doesn’t matter to you, but it does to me. It is the difference between great and “I don’t give a shit.” 

And this brings me to another element of a grand restaurant. It is the ability to just be what you are, make what you know, and be content in that. The pressure to tap dance like an asshole to the regular and social medias is unassailable. The design of your store does matter, your tables do matter, and obviously the food matters. But it has to be your own thing. Pearl was always its own thing, at least in my observation, and sometimes despite what was going on. Maybe I’m wrong on this and my inner detached WASP is coming out, but it is always better to succeed for a time plainly as you are than to be around long enough to see yourself become another. That is, of course, a luxurious position; but the best things are always less. Every endeavor, whether business or arts, gets to a point where you can take it too far, and then it becomes mediocre at best. If you are lucky, your initial thing was so good people got hooked like a drug and it didn’t matter if you became big. All they want is the high they’ll never get again.

I’m saddened Pearl Oyster Bar is closed. I feel I no longer have some place to be. It reminds me of the Seinfeld finale where I thought “What now?”, but that kind of means it was a good place. There have been many places that have closed where I couldn’t be bothered to blink. It was a good run of a restaurant and it symbolized an idealized New York restaurant in my mind. I hope the owner, whom I’ve never met, can enjoy her savings and her staff will be fine. There will never be another Pearl Oyster Bar, but hopefully newer versions of it.

Alex