Rodney's Oyster House

Janice, Kirby and I have been planning a happy hour buck-a-shuck oyster crawl around Vancouver. Rodney's Oyster House in Yaletown was our first stop.

The place seemed very casual, and there was plenty of seating on 2 levels.

We could see the guys shucking away behind the counters.

The server brought over a tray of house-made sauces for the seafood. They ranged from mild to spicy from left to right. My favourite was the sea witch sauce. I don't know how to describe it, so you'll have to try it yourself!

The Low Tide menu is available Monday through Saturday from 3-6 pm. The place filled up quickly as the servers shouted "Low Tide!!!" to mark the beginning of happy hour. Since raw oysters were not enough to satisfy our seafood cravings, we also got mussels ($10.49) cooked in dill butter, garlic and wine. The mussels were a bit small, but they were plump and fleshy enough. And the butter wine sauce was just heavenly. It was very savoury and tasty with the perfect ratio of butter to wine and a well-tuned saltiness.

Now is the time I can talk about the inattentive, bordering on non-existent service. We noticed that every other table got their bread the moment they sat down, but ours never came. After our mussels arrived, we finally managed to wave down one of the busy servers to ask for bread. The bread was very crusty on the outside. You might even say it was hard and tough. It wasn't that great by itself, but we fought over it because we used it to soak up the delicious buttery sauce from the mussels.

Finally time for the oysters! Too bad it wasn't buck-a-shuck though. It was $1.50 per oyster, so we just ordered a dozen to share. The slippery shellfish varied in size, but they were all very juicy and fresh. There was a small pile of freshly shaved horseradish on the side. I can't stand the taste of horseradish, but I thought it was pretty cool that they shaved it fresh to order.

Even though I really enjoyed the food, the service would discourage me from coming back. We were largely ignored during the meal, and getting a server's attention took an average of 5 minutes. The prices weren't exactly cheap either, so I had slightly higher expectations. Oh well, maybe we'll come across a better place on the next few stops of our oyster crawl.