A raw bar is a small restaurant or a bar within a restaurant where live raw shellfish are shucked and served. These restaurants are traditionally popular in coastal resort areas, and increasingly with the advent of fast shipment of seafood, in major cities away from the coast.
Raw bars serve a selection of oysters and quahogs, and sometimes supplement the menu with cooked versions of the same seafoods such as clam chowder, oyster stew, and steamers. Condiments, such as cocktail sauce, may be available for consumers.
Though there is some similarity to a sushi bar, the two types of restaurant are considered different and are not generally mixed or confused. Sometimes raw liver is served as well.
Famous quotes containing the words raw and/or bar:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandolin
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)