text: I consider my foray here to be a complete Yelp letdown I arrived at approximately pm and still faced a hour wait to be seated with approximately people ahead of me in line The reason for the long waits is the limited bar seating There are approximately seats and only roasting pans so at any given time half the bar is eating and half are waiting for the food with each turnover taking approximately minutes nnOnce seated there is an additional minute wait for food Math check you have now invested hours so it better be some mindblowing food to overcome the interminable wait times Looking around the faces of my fellow diners it was clear that Oyster Bar did not deliver We all looked sullen and grumpy reasonable given it was past midnight and we were all starving nnIf you want faster sustenance I recommend getting a bowl of clam chowder Even that took about minutes to arrive It was nondescript in every way nnI ordered the Palace Pan Roast with Lobster Shrimp and Crab in a creamy tomato base The open cooking system admittedly is a decent show and I enjoyed watching the chef make our dishes There are steam pots and into them go in this particular order and at designated times a pat of butter your seafood clam broth the tomatocream soup and a scoop full of crab meat Johns Gumbo was similar First the butter then vegetables and seafood clam broth a dark roux and a scoop of crab meat nnThe problem is that there is a haphazard timing system All the butter goes into all the pots at once Then the chef comes back around for the seafood Once the broths and soups go in he usually takes that opportunity to focus on shucking the bivalves It was a new form of torture watching your food bubble furiously away while the chef manhandled a dozen oysters or prepare shrimp cocktail Literally all you wanted to do was reach out and help yourself to the soup and instead the chef spent a quarter of an hour on each fruits de mer plate nnThe wait was certainly not worth it The Chef spent so much time on the shucking that I think our dishes overreduced My pan roast was an inch lower in volume than the next item and I knew it was going to be salty You get a big soup bowl full of a creamy tomato soup one scoop of rice a few shrimps and lots of crab pieces The proportions were so off I would have that much soup for a family of four and at least two scoops of rice apiece I do not know how anyone could have spooned so much salty soup without anything to soak it up Johns Gumbo was similar except it tasted like liquified roux nnWe also saw some unsanitary behavior going on The Chef washed the steam pots after emptying their stews into the bowls and left the bowls inches from the pots he was washing certain to let dish water get into the food Not appetizing