Mink Dynasty

Sansom Street's Oyster House is back in sure hands.

by Trey Popp

Jessica Kourkounis ROAST OF THE TOWN: The titular bivalve is served multiple ways at Oyster House, including roasted and topped with house-made chorizo and cilantro lime butter.

It was lunch hour at the Oyster House, and a grandmotherly woman sipped beer above the remnants of a lobster roll at the raw bar. One forearm perched lightly on the cream-colored marble, her spine straight as a fence post, she had the air of someone reaching a verdict. Her eyes wandered over to me.

"Have you ever been here before?" she asked.

"Only since it reopened last month," I said.

"Then you don't know."

"No, I guess I don't. What did I miss?"

"It used to be dark, and comfortable, with wood everywhere." Her voice had that lilting Germanic cadence that gives even misfortunes a strangely buoyant gloss. Except for the exposed ducts overhead and a black chalkboard blossoming with colored script, there was nothing dark about this reincarnated restaurant. Whitewashed brick walls and blond floorboards gleamed beneath track lighting. The short glass curtain separating us from the oyster shuckers was so spotless it could have been used to cap the end of the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Do you like what they've done with the place?" I asked her.

Her verdict was now ready. "Being old," she replied, "I liked it the old way. But you have to move with the flow."

The flow at Sansom Street Oyster House reaches back a lot of years. Established in 1976 at its present address by David Mink, the restaurant is part of a family concern that goes back even further. Mink took over his father's oyster house, Kelly's on Mole Street, when the patriarch passed away in 1969. By that time, the Minks had been shucking oysters since 1947.

They stopped in 1999, selling the business to Cary Neff, who later expanded his portfolio with Coquette. Last summer, Neff filed for bankruptcy protection and shuttered the Oyster House. The building had remained in Mink hands, however, and now the restaurant is back in them, as well. In June, after completely overhauling the interior, David's son Sam took over the reins. Down came a heavy wall underneath the Nodding Head's second-story beer tanks, up went an I-beam spanning the newly bright and airy space. A charming hodgepodge of decorated oyster plates covers the walls, leavening the austere color palette just enough.

I can't say I missed the old, wood-paneled version, but after a lunch and a dinner I'm glad the Oyster House is back. I don't usually go looking for raw oysters in late July — when a warm link in the cold supply chain can do real damage, and when the throes of spawning can reduce the bivalve to a shrunken shadow of its optimal self — but it was hard to go wrong here.

I had them almost every way they come.

On the half shell, a Cape Cod Wellfleet was a clean, cool, tightly wrapped package of mineral-tinged brine. A pair of richly textured Royal Miyagis, a sought-after specimen from British Columbia, went down like sea cream. There are usually about half a dozen varieties to choose from, ranging from Maine and New Brunswick all the way to Chincoteague Bay, Va. (Tasting the latter next to its cold-water superiors shows just how radically an extra 40 cents can improve a single slurp of seafood.)

It's a shame you can't mix up the roasted oysters, which come in foursomes, because a half-shell squadron topped with head chef Greg Ling's superb housemade chorizo and cilantro lime butter was outstanding. Misnamed "Español" — "Mexicana" would be a tighter fit — they were roasted ever so gently, enough to deepen the oysters' flavor without turning them into nuggets of rubber.

I was a little put off by the $12 price tag on a lunchtime oyster po' boy. I know Philadelphia's in the midst of a double-digit sandwich epidemic, but really, even ones whose names reference poverty? Yet there was no begrudging this crisp-crackle baguette after the first bite of full-flavored tomato, salty pickled onions and breaded Delaware Bay oysters. And the featherweight housemade potato chips, as brown as almond skins and almost as wispy, banished any yearning for fries.

Lunch isn't cheap, but dinner is reasonable — and encompasses more than just oysters. Ling's menu is a little more ambitious than the average fish house, but doesn't overreach. Cleverness rides backseat to comfort. A yellow tomato gazpacho struck just the right balance between cool acidity and bready depth, its thick sun-colored purée topped with a dice of cucumbers, red tomatoes and lump crabmeat. A perfectly seared flounder fillet rode atop a hash of potatoes, tomatoes and bell peppers that played like a second chance at breakfast. The only relative disappointment was a smoked trout salad, which needed something less tart than green apples and a lemony dressing to counter the bitter endive and frisée.

The lingering sweetness of an excellent Old-Fashioned helped with that. As did a compact list of $7-$8 wines by the glass that features some crisp companions for oysters that go well beyond Sauvignon Blanc into Verdejo, Albariño and Grüner Veltliner territory. The liquid program here, curated by head bartender Katie Loeb, was an unexpected surprise from top to bottom. As with the cooking, you won't find anything conspicuously artistic, but the common standbys are executed with uncommon finesse. Notably the rum punch, a boozy black-tea concoction touched with cloves and served in a half-pint Mason jar with a jug-ear handle.

My stately companion eyed that old-school vessel with a spark of envy. I reach it out toward her. "Have a sip," I said.

She giggled and nodded no. "I will have this when I come back," she said, and got up to compliment the oyster shuckers on her way out. The Minks have restarted the proverbial flow, and supplied some good reasons to move with the current.

ADDENDUM: In print, this column neglected to name Oyster House's head chef. Greg Ling, who came to the restaurant from 1225 RAW Sushi & Sake Lounge, merits mention for breathing fresh life into the menu of an old institution — not an easy thing to do. One of the refreshing qualities of his cooking is that it doesn't sacrifice comfort to self-conscious bids for attention. But that doesn't mean he should have remained anonymous in my review.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Oyster House | 1516 Sansom St., 215-567-7683, oysterhousephilly.com. Mon.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; closed Sun. Raw bar, $7-$23; small plates, $7-$17; large plates, $14-$50. Wheelchair accessible.