The Oyster Festival, from two blocks up the hill
The Oyster Bay Oyster Festival returns to Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park on October 17 and 18, 2026. A local's guide to the weekend, and where to sit down when your feet give out.
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Notes from the room.
What is coming out of the kitchen, what is open at the bar, and the small things worth writing down.
More from the Journal
Where to eat near Sagamore Hill
Visiting Theodore Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay? The village is five minutes away, and an all-day restaurant sits at the middle of it. Here is how to plan the meal around the visit.
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Four to six
Happy hour, Monday to Friday. What we put on it, and why the hour between the last of lunch and the start of dinner is the one worth keeping cheap.
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Pizza by the slab, not the pie
Roman-style pizza: baked long in a tray, cut into rectangular slabs, and ordered whole from a list of nine. Why the shape is the point.
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A glass before dinner
The hour between finishing work and sitting down to eat is its own thing. Here is how to spend it at the bar.
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Six toasts
Ricotta and honey through burrata. Six things on bread that run from the middle of the day into the evening, and hold up at both ends.
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How to build a board
Six cheeses, five meats, and no house rules about how to combine them. A practical guide to ordering charcuterie without overthinking it.
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The spritz, and the hour it belongs to
Some drinks want a time of day. On the Wine Line Spritz, the aperitivo instinct, and why a short cocktail list is a choice and not a shortage.
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Sixteen behind the curtain
Two ways to have your own night here: a semi-private side of the room for up to sixteen, or the whole room and bar for up to forty.
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Lunch, quick or unhurried
The middle of the day has two entirely different customers. On building a lunch menu that serves the forty minute version and the two hour version equally well.
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House wine is not a compromise
The by-the-glass pour a restaurant chooses says more about it than the expensive end of the list. On house red, white and rosé, and what they are actually for.
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Three ways to end it
A chocolate lava cake, a Nutella pizza and an affogato. Three desserts, and an argument for the one most people walk past.
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Come and sit down.
Coffee and lunch from half past eleven, a glass of wine by six, dinner into the late evening.