St Paul Fish Company at the Public Market in the Historic Third Ward was a seafood paradise albeit with long lines and raucous crowd. We ventured through the Tiki Bar thinking a quick stop for seafood + beers. Unfortunately, it was elbow to elbow packed with drunkards on a Sunday afternoon and soon made our way out to the Oyster bar inside. Be prepared to wait for 15-20 minutes for seats at the bar or upto 30-45 minutes for tables. This is the only restaurant with a wide variety of fresh oysters in Milwaukee so we gave it a go. The oysters are sourced from both coasts with prices ranging from $2 to 2.25 per shuck. We ate in waves and started with 2 of each and found favorites to be Pacific Sunset (WA), Blue Point (Va) and Duxbury (MA) each had their own unique flavor. Beers are cold on tap with local craft and domestic Schlitz being the top nod at $5 a pint. Truly disappointing service last Tuesday afternoon. Seems that we weren't a friend or "regular" so we hardly received any attention at the raw bar. Understandably, paced ourselves through 2 dozen oysters, several drafts and appetizers... we should warrant some type of customer interaction throughout the meal as we noticed everyone else got a "how is everything..." Or "can I get you another beer". We felt like we had to work or at least repeat ourselves a few times to put in orders with the St Paul Fish employees right in front of us. Fair warning that the Oyster bar is seemingly a first come first served space. It's a bit cut throat to wait at the end as that's where the locals hang out... Third time wasn't the charm and doubt we'll make a trip to the Third Ward for St Paul Fish again.
