My tasting crew and I found Fitzpatrick's Crest Tavern, which advertises itself as being less than five minutes from anywhere on the Island - as long as you don't catch any red lights or get stopped for speeding. Off-season that seemed like a fairly likely scenario, and we were mad hungry.
Owners Tim and Lisa Fitzpatrick managed the restaurant for several years before buying it and adding their name to Crest Tavern five years ago. Lisa Fitzpatrick says that the off season allows them to focus on the community and do more specials. The population of the borough can swell 25 times its permanent residency of about 4,000 during the summer.
In the peak of the season at Crest Tavern you can expect a wait of an hour for a table, but we were able to grab one in less than 10 minutes. And any trepidation I had that this would be boring food was gone when I saw that the table sported a bottle of an offbeat jalapeño sauce and that the menu offered a Liverwurst and Onion Sandwich on rye bread ($4.99).
We began with Fresh Cherrystones on the Half ($8.99 for a dozen) because we are at the shore in a month with an "R" in it. As the adage goes, after all, shellfish are abundant and in-season then. These were fresh and plump and, given the stormy weather, probably as close to the ocean as I wanted to get.
Another appetizer that seemed like a Shore vacation must-have were the Fried Mac and Cheese Wedges with French Fries ($5.99). Both the wedges and the fries were the standard frozen variety.
Not much to say, other than that they came to the table hot, but most of the food here is prepared in-house so my recommendation is to forgo the fried prepared bar food and go for the better stuff.
A cold blustery day at the shore demands a hot bowl of soup. Our Soup of the Day choices ($2.50 cup; $2.95 bowl) were Manhattan Clam and Chicken Vegetable.
For our tastes, the consensus was that the chowder wasn't "clammy enough."
