Fishmonger's

With all the wonderful new restaurants that have appeared in Durham over the past few years, it is sometimes easy to overlook the ones that were already in business long before the Piedmonts and Federals and Rue Clers opened their doors. Such is the case with Fishmonger's, which has been serving Bull City diners since the early years of the Reagan presidency. It took a visitor from out of town (indeed, out of the country) to notice the oyster special they had on Friday night and to suggest going there for dinner. I am happy to report that the raw oysters, briny and fresh-tasting, were spectacular. According to our waitress, the oil spill last April had disrupted the oyster trade so much that these were some of the first oysters Fishmonger's had gotten this season. I preferred the raw oysters by leaps and bounds over the fried, whose breading was too heavy for the delicate flavor of the oysters. On that note, why anyone breads oysters in anything other than Zatarain's Fish-Fri I'll never know.

We also had the Frogmore stew, which, as many readers will know, is not a stew at all but a combination of shrimp, potatoes, sausage, and corn-on-the-cob boiled in seasoned water. At Fishmonger's, the seasoning is Old Bay. The flavor was delicious--the corn was especially scrumptious, and I took much pleasure in sucking the juice out of the cob, as if it were a crawfish head--and there was just enough boil in the bottom of the bowl to sop with a piece of bread.