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| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
If you ever find yourself out in Virginia Beach, be sure to check out Chick's Oyster Bar located just off of Shore Drive a bit west of the beach. We discovered this place during a beach weekend after deciding to embark on a mission to find cheap, fresh seafood. I admit . . . it wasn't a particularly creative or challenging task since we were in beach territory after all, but we were feeling lazy. After doing a little research, we ended up at Chick's, which is one of those divey seafood bars that you find along every coast, but Chick's is particularly great because it's located right on Lynnhaven Inlet so just about every table has an unobstructed view of the water. The kitchen serves fairly simple fare featuring locally caught seafood (shrimp, fish, oysters, and clams) that can be fried, steamed, or grilled. And if you arrive by boat, you don't even need to get a table, as servers will meet you right along the dock. We, of course, arrived by car :)
The food was quite good considering the ridiculously low prices. For dinner, we ordered a couple of super tall beers, a dozen raw oysters, a flounder dinner, oyster stew, and, per Chowhound's instructions, the she-crab soup. The flounder dinner definitely did not disappoint --- the flounder was perfectly cooked with just the right ratio of crunchy batter to flaky fish plus, one of my favorite starches, sweet potato fries. The real star, however, was the oyster stew. It was simple and heavenly: milky bacon and oystery goodness in a bowl. I was pretty impressed with how flavorful it was considering how unbriney and flavorless most Mid-Atlantic oysters are, regardless of how fresh (the raw oysters we ordered were just that). Unfortunately, the she-crab soup was overall a bit too thick and salty for my taste though it did have very generous chunks of fresh crabmeat. Perhaps it had been sitting on the stove a little too long? Finally, as if we hadn't eaten enough already, we topped it all off with a scrumptious black cherry crush/jungle juice-type drink (black cherry rum, sweet and sour mix, and sprite) and the largest brownie sundae that I've ever seen. The entire meal only set us back about $90 (including tax and a pretty sizeable tip) and I was convinced that I'd never eat again, though I probably could have slugged back an entire pitcher of the black cherry concoction. Mission accomplished.
