East End Eats: The Sea Slug Lounge

One of the few pieces of evidence of the Sea Slug Lounge's existence is a small sign at the beginning of a dirt track saying "Seafood and eat it." It sets the tone for an off-beat and quixotic eating secret that - yes, yes, I hear your screams of outrage - is about to be blabbed.

In a remote spot on Napeague is a fish farm that has been an East End institution for years. Fish and shellfish are sold to local restaurants and wholesale shipments travel as far away as China and Japan. East Enders drop in to buy prepared clambakes, shucked clams, some fish for dinner. The office, with its pot-bellied stove, mountains of paperwork, and occasional goat could be from a Melville novel.

Outside, big, circular tanks compete with rusting equipment, rotting sheds, and huge, muddy puddles for the marine grunge award. But keep walking and the sea comes into view. On a little fenced patch of sand between a water cistern and an ancient wooden barn is the Sea Slug Lounge - a handful of tables under umbrellas and a plastic palm tree.

Rooster Patrol

Two handsome roosters and a few hens patrol the lane and add their voices to soft-rock oldies cranking from a radio near the trellised, frond-covered cook station.

The all-seafood menu is chalked on a board at the entrance. There are clams and oysters on the half shell, two types of chowder, shrimp cocktail, and lobster bisque, a house specialty. There are stuffed clams and steamed mussels with garlic, whatever size lobster you want, and a couple of choices for the "fish of the day."

This is not a place for the impatient - when we were there, the one cook was juggling all the lunch orders and at the same time boiling a mountain of lobsters for a rush party order. So the service is friendly but slow.

Oysters By The Sea

We sat there in the shade of the plastic palm tree watching my granddaughter patiently trotting after roosters. Occasionally we would wander over and dig through the ice in a big metal drum to find ourselves a soda or an iced tea. The sun beamed down, the blue waters of Napeague Harbor sparkled, and we could have been in Maine.

What could be better than eating oysters by the sea? Everyone since the ancient Romans has loved oysters - Casanova ate 50 with his evening punch, Germanicus, brother of the Emperor Tiberius, consumed 100 a day, and Henry IV of England worked up an appetite for dinner with 300.

Ausonius wrote an ode to them, and Sallust, visiting Colchester, where an oyster festival has been held every Oct. 8 since 1318, wrote "Poor Britons! There is some good in them after all. They have produced an oyster."

Help Yourself

Oysters always taste better outdoors and these, at $6.50 a half dozen or $9.50 a dozen, couched on a bed of ice (albeit in a tinfoil dish), were the very flavor and spirit of summer.

The Manhattan clam chowder, at $4, was a chunky meal in itself and, of course, there's no doubting that these clams are straight out of the water. The mussels were small, but luminously fresh and sweet-tasting.

No one worries overmuch about pulling their "beards" off first, this is a help-yourself kind of place.

The price for lobster varies according to size, but otherwise the most expensive dish is the fish of the day at $12.50, on this occasion a choice between salmon and a kebab of swordfish and tuna.

Getaway Funk

We picked the salmon, a hefty portion cooked as you watch and served with home fries and a fresh ear of corn. To the delight of several children, a large Rhodesian ridgeback wandered through the cafe and politely volunteered to deal with the leftovers.

The Sea Slug's lobster roll costs $7.50 and it's all lobster, there's no "mystery fish" here. The roll is one of those soft, white, mushy things, of course, but even that tastes better in the fresh air.

The Sea Slug Lounge isn't for you if you want white tablecloths and nice china. You won't like it if you're bothered by mud and visiting dogs. You certainly won't like it if you're looking for "The Hamptons."

But if that is precisely what you're trying to get away from, take an hour off and go. I can't think of a funkier place.