Marlow & Sons.(Restaurant review)

You can be annoyed by Marlow & Sons, if you're in a stickler's mood. The place--a commissary/newsstand/tavern/oyster bar, and, most recently, restaurant--is pure ironic-nostalgic pastiche. Sausages dangle from the ceiling as if to evoke turn-of-the-century Little Italy; the waiters wear butcher-style aprons, and sometimes mustaches, for a dose of Five Points. In the cabinet-of-curiosities mode so beloved these days by hip New Yorkers, the bathroom is filled with salvaged obscurities: a youth-brigade photograph, an old doctor's scale, and a candle stuck in a jam jar. The effect, heightened by the blue nimbus of the looming Williamsburg Bridge, is something like Ellis Island by way of Epcot. But the fact that--in addition to fresh baked goods (plum-nectarine galette, poppy-seed cake, pizza), whole milk, novelty toothbrushes, and a selection of vintage gums--the storefront shop stocks Cosmopolitan assures us that the period pose is all in good fun.

Despite its hodgepodge leanings, when it comes to food, Marlow & Sons takes a purist stance. In a corner of the back dining room, an oyster shucker plies his trade with an ...