New Haven, CTSeafood

Chef Emily Mingrone's Fair Haven Oyster Company is a small wood-frame room with a back patio, and CTbites' 2025 review went for the skate: a whole wing pan-seared and plated with capers, Meyer lemon, tomato preserves, and brown butter, the quick sear leaving the flesh moist and rich. A dorade rounded out the meal. Beyond the plated fish there is a full raw bar of oysters. Order the skate if it is on the menu, and start with a dozen from the shuck list.

Shell & Bones sits on the water at City Point, and CTbites names it as a stop on the Connecticut Oyster Trail and the host of the Trail's press launch. The draw is the raw bar and a waterfront deck, a place built around local oysters with a view of the harbor. Come for a raw-bar spread of Connecticut oysters and a cocktail out on the dock. It reads as the dressed-up end of the New Haven seafood range.

Moby Dick's opened in West Haven in 2022 and set out to shuck a million oysters, picking up local best-seafood nods along the way. CTbites' 2024 visit flagged the Tuna Sashimi Oyster, a freshly shucked oyster topped with sushi-grade tuna, seaweed, tobiko, and a sesame-soy-ginger sauce, listed at $8. The raw bar is the reason to go. Order a round of the Tuna Sashimi Oysters and build out from the shuck list from there.

The D'Amato family has sold fresh fried seafood in New Haven since the 1930s, tracing back to the old Savin Rock stands, and in 2018 the New Haven Independent covered the fifth generation, Toma and Jennifer, adding a sit-down dining room next to the longtime Whalley Avenue takeout counter. It is a fish market and fry shop where the fried seafood is the whole point. Order a fried whole-belly clam or a fish plate and eat it at the new dine-in tables.