Our Quest for oysters in Chicago....

So, Manny and I have been on a quest for CHEAP, QUALITY Oysters in Chicago for about a year now.  This quest originated because you people in Milwaukee have it made!

Christmas Oysters

So at the Milwaukee market you have access to high quality oysters for a very low price at St. Paul Fish Company.   It is rare that they have an oyster for over $1.50 the highest I have ever seen their oysters is for $2.00 each, and I am telling you, if St. Paul Fish Company has a $2.00 oyster, that oyster will cost you at least $5.00 anywhere else so try it immediately or they will run out!  They always have your standard blue point and a rotating selection of delicious oysters, we really like the gold band and the well fleet.  To the left is a picture from Christmas Eve.  So Christmas Eve we went to the market, enjoyed some oysters AND our $1.00 beers before we went out to my Grandma's. Oh yeah I forgot to mention, they have $1.00 beers on Saturdays!  So lets sum this up, $1.00 - $2.00 oysters, fresh delicious, perfectly shucked, and to top it off, $1.00 draft specials.  I don't think it gets much better than that! The only problem is that we live in Chicago, not Milwaukee.  If we lived in Milwaukee we would probably be there every Saturday! 

(http://www.milwaukeepublicmarket.org/index.php) (http://www.stpaulfish.com/)

So not living in Milwaukee, and Chicago being the amazing metropolis it is, we figured there has to be something comparable here in Chicago, somewhere... I know all the standard places, where the oysters are good but far from cheap (GT Oyster, Quay, Shaws, etc..) all of these places though are rather expensive.  

After some searching, i found this place in Lincoln Park called half-shell.  This place seemed to be quite popular on Yelp. They had a dozen oysters for $16.90, making them $1.40 an oyster.  They only kind they have is blue point, which is a standard oyster but still good.  Manny and I were very excited and went Friday night.  We walked down the block and found it.  It is this little basement place, which was very promising.  We were so excited and took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered our dozen oysters.  Our seat was right in front of the ice where they keep the oysters.  To our surprise the guy at the bar did not take the oysters out of the ice, but rather oysters that had been pre shucked and were soaking in some water below the bar.  This made these oysters not good.  They had lost all of their ocean taste, no briny flavor, and had observed some of the water they were soaked in.  They had lost all their flavor and even some of their texture.  We were so disappointed. We are kind of giving them the benefit of a doubt and thought maybe they were cutting those corners because they were so busy?  But still hire some kid to stand there and just shuck oysters all night.  We figured we might give them another shot, maybe on a weeknight, but if they fail us again we are never coming back and going to continue our quest..... 

Cheddar Fries

We were so sad by the disappointing oysters we decided we needed to hit a guaranteed home run.  Manny then pointed out that we are really close to the Weiner Circle.  Now many people have probably seen the Weiner Circle on shows where the workers insult people and the people are disrespectful and taunt them.  Well Manny and I are super respectful (afraid) and treat it like the soup nazi on Seinfeld.  We try to make our orders always correct and efficient.  The thing that is so amazing about the Weiner Circle is its Cheddar Sauce.  We don't know what it is about it, but that Cheddar Sauce is so freaked amazing! Thank you Weiner Circle for saving our night!