Randazzo's Clam Bar, Paul Randazzo's Red Sauce Italian Seafood On The Water at Sheepshead Bay

[DonRocks]

The New York Times' Pete Wells reviews Randazzo's Clam Bar (slideshow).

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[Steve R.]

Even though I live in Brooklyn and get to the Sheepshead Bay area reasonably often, I cant say that I've been inside Randazzo's during the past several years. It does look like they've renovated to keep up with the new neighbors (several Turkish places) & this might indicate that they've upp'ed the kitchen as well (unlikely, but possible); however, the visits I've paid before that over the last, say, 20 years have not gotten me anything more than mediocre food. Not that mediocre red sauce seafood is a bad thing in my book of tastebud pleasers, but giving this a star is, in my opinion, absurd. There's been some speculation on another food board that this may be related to his interest in places affected by Hurricane Sandy & other speculation that its a precursor to a review of Carbone, the high end red sauce place that's just opened in NYC (although Randazzo's is a seafood red sauce place and there would have been other lower end red sauce joints Wells could have focused on for comparison if that was his goal). At any rate, if you want breaded, fried reasonably fresh shellfish made old skool with different spice levels of red sauce, you could do worse than going to Randazzo's. But, if you want good red sauce food (some would argue that there is no such thing... I would disagree) at the same basic price point, there are better places all around Brooklyn and Queens.