Island Park, NY isn’t technically in New York City, we admit. However, it is only 48 minutes by train from Penn Station ($6.75 each way, off-peak) on the Long Beach line– a shorter ride than many subway trips entirely within Gotham’s borders. We also know that if you’re anything like we are, you’re willing to travel for quality nosh, something we found plenty of at Jordan Lobster Farms. Jordan’s (which suffers from labile apostrophe syndrome), is home to a huge wholesale seafood business that supplies many local restaurants with their crustaceans, as well as a very sizeable retail shop. About 10 years ago, the Jordan family decided to open their own restaurant on the premises, taking cues from similar establishments that dot the New England coastline from Connecticut to the tip of Maine– the focus here is, entirely unapologetically, on serving ultra-high quality food. Not décor, service, or cocktails. This, like almost every Northeastern lobster restaurant, is not a place to visit if you care more about who designed the dining room than what’s on your plate. But if you really, really love fresh shellfish, this is exactly where you want to be.

We didn’t know any of this when we arrived in Island Park. Following a tip from a Chowhounder, we took the LIRR with the intention of purchasing several lobster culls (one-clawed lobsters) to use in a lobster roll recipe we’ve been working on recently. Restaurants most often use culls in their lobster rolls (and all lobster salad dishes) because they’re cheaper than regular lobsters and still contain lots of tail meat. Jordan’s, we were told, sold culls– and probably was where our favorite restaurants got theirs, too. So of course we had to go. And indeed, they do sell culls for about 20% less than the price of their regular lobster counterparts: one-claws go for $7.99/lb., while double-clawed lobsters go for $10-11/lb., depending on their weight. HungryMan and I stood and watched the staff sort lobsters into multi-tiered tubs and debated how many we wanted to purchase, finally deciding that we’d be much better off discussing things over dinner.

To eat at Jordan’s Lobster Bar, you must wait in line. Everyone waits in the line– there is no table service, although there is an outdoor dining area that wraps around the front of the building. Even when there are dozens of people queueing up to order food, as there are during peak dinner and lunchtime hours, the counter staff at Jordan’s is very efficient. We waited no more than 5 minutes at 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday– one of the busiest periods. Waiting for your food to be prepared can take a bit longer, but it’s still a short wait– and you always have the option of sitting down and waiting for the staff to announce your number over the loudspeaker system.

HungryMan and I thought about taking advantage of an excellent-value special on the menu: three 1-lb. lobsters, plus side dishes (corn-on-the-cob, cole slaw, and drawn butter) for two people ($39.95), but we wanted to sample other dishes, so we decided on a 2-lb. lobster (again, with side dishes, $29.95) instead. What we got was a foil-wrapped crustacean, still steaming from being cooked in a large mesh bag with a few dozen of its siblings, tail meat split, claws cracked, and ready to eat. It was superb: extraordinarily fresh, not at all waterlogged (as some steamed lobsters can be), and gorgeously fleshy. For a minute, as I sat dipping claw meat into the little cup of butter, I thought I was in Ogunquit.

Once the lobster was gone– and it didn’t really take long– we tucked into an order of the fried clams ($9.95, one of the evening’s specials). This was easily one of the best bargains we’ve found in a long time, as the dish consisted not of stringy clam strips, but of a softball-sized mound of whole belly Long Island clams, breaded in a light cornmeal batter. A Manhattan restaurant (now defunct) we visited in 2004 charged $27.00 for a much smaller plate of similar clams, and honestly, Jordan’s were a few thousand times better.

HungryMan and I picked at the side dishes towards the end of the meal, nibbling on the french fries, corn, cole slaw, and some gazpacho we’d ordered in a moment of eyes-larger-than-stomach eagerness. All of them were quite good and worth finishing, although by this point, neither of us wanted much more food, regardless of how good it was. Don’t think for a minute that we weren’t tempted by the homemade Key Lime Pie for sale ($3.25/slice or $13/pie), but we had reached our limit. Instead, we preferred to sit and look out over South Oyster Bay, drinking Blue Point Toasted Lagers ($4.50) and watching the seagulls in the distance, savoring our last half-hour before we had to hop the hourly train back to Manhattan. Just like that, we completely forgot about purchasing the lobster culls we had come to Jordan’s to buy. But then again, we now have a perfect excuse to come back again soon, something we absolutely will do. Ayuh.

Jordan Lobster Farms/ Jordan’s Lobster Bar, 1 Pettit Place, Island Park, NY, 516-889-3314