The biggest weekend of the year
Every October, the waterfront at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park turns into the East Coast's largest waterfront festival. Shucking contests, oyster eating contests, two pavilions of arts and crafts, rides, and live music across the whole weekend. This year is the 43rd running, and the dates are set: Saturday October 17 and Sunday October 18, 2026.
If you have never been: it is enormous, it is loud in the best way, and the whole village is part of it whether it means to be or not.
How locals do it
Get here early. The festival draws crowds from the whole Island, and the roads into the village fill by late morning. The LIRR's Oyster Bay branch puts you a short walk from the park, and on festival weekend the train is genuinely the better move.
Wear shoes you can stand in. The park is on the water, October on the harbor has opinions about wind, and you will walk more than you think.
And pace the oysters. The festival's are eaten standing up, from a paper tray, in the salt air, and that is exactly how they should be. But there is a second way to eat oysters in this town, and it involves a chair.
Two blocks up the hill
We are at 30 Audrey Avenue, a few minutes' walk from the park. On festival weekend The Audrey is the sit-down move: a proper table, a cold glass, and a raw bar of our own.
Our oysters rotate through Long Island bays when they are at their best, with Cape Cod and Wellfleet in season, served with lemon, mignonette and house cocktail sauce. Festival day is the one day of the year you can compare notes across a whole town.
The bar takes walk-ins all day. For a table at dinner after the crowds thin, book ahead; festival weekend fills the room, and we would rather you were not standing twice in one day.
Worth knowing
- The festival is a charitable event and the details (hours, admission, parking) are the organizers' to set. Check the festival's own listings closer to the weekend for the final word.
- Sunday is usually the gentler day if crowds are not your thing.
- The village does not empty when the festival closes. The evening after is one of the best nights of the year down here.
October 17 and 18. We will be here before, during and after.
