Anchor Oyster Bar

About the Business

Specialties

We are a small locally owned seafood restaurant and fish market in the Castro. Owned and operated by the same owner since 1977, San Francisco's one-and-only Anchor Oyster Bar has been serving fresh sustainably caught fish, shellfish, crab, and delicious simply prepared seafood dishes for over 30 years. Anchor serves the Bay Area's favorite clam chowder (San Francisco Chronicle) and the best oysters on the West coast (Coastal Living Magazine). Check us out on the third season of Check Please Bay Area!

History

Established in 1977.

The storefront sits at the sleepy end of Castro Street. Roseann Grimm opened it in 1977 when the neighborhood was just finding its identity -- transitioning from Irish working-class holdout to gay mecca -- but she never catered to any one crowd. Grimm came from a long line of Italian fishermen, an oyster bar seemed like a natural choice. "My grandparents ran an oyster house in North Beach, across from Enrico's, and I have pictures of all my uncles in front of our house on Fair Oaks with an ocean's worth of sea bass strung up," Grimm says. Anchor's no-fuss interior -- a lunch counter and a handful of tables decorated with fishing photos of Grimm's Uncle Al -- echoes the food. While it's augmented by more adventurous daily specials, the menu has as its core straightforward piles of fresh crab, prawns, and shrimp served cocktail-style or on salads, and a thick, creamy, not too fishy New England clam chowder that has yet to meet its match anywhere in town.