Review: Bigelow's in Rockville Centre

A piscatory beacon along a distinctly non-maritime stretch of Sunrise Highway in Rockville Centre, Bigelow’s is one of Long Island’s truly iconic eateries. With its gabled roof, striped awnings and neon sign, the bite-sized building has barely changed since it opened in 1939. When the Andreolas family bought the place in 1991, they recognized the perfection of founder Russ Bigelow's vision, and dedicated themselves to serving it.

Inside, Bigelow's is a lean, mean, seafood-frying machine. For most of its history, the entire restaurant consisted of a 30-stool counter curving around a Fryolator station but, during the pandemic, the Andreolas family built a deck that is peeled down to the screens in the summer, zipped up and heated in the winter, doubling the eatery's capacity and making it more suitable for groups larger than two.

All the fried seafood here is recommended, but the undisputed stars of the show are the fried, whole-belly Ipswich clams. A different species from the hard-shell quahog (of which littlenecks, top necks and cherrystones are just different sizes), these are the soft-shell clams that you will sometimes encounter as steamers. But when you dredge them in a mixture of cornmeal (for crunch) and corn flour (for loft) and fry them until they are golden and crisp — well, you’ve just split the culinary atom.

Everything that comes out of the Bigelow’s fryer is a triumph: shrimp, calamari, scallops, oysters, cod and even the more familiar clam strips, which are sliced from giant quahogs. Fried fillets of flounder are particularly tasty when served on a bun with a slice of American cheese, Filet-O-Fish style. It’s crazy not to order the hand-cut french fries as your side, but you might have to get a second side because the coleslaw (Bigelow’s foray into the vegetable kingdom) is great too. If anything is going to tempt you away from the deep fryer, it will be the lobster roll.

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