The Oyster Bar of Dothan

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OPEN NOW - Closes at 6:00pm

The Oyster Bar is almost like going to an aunt or cousin's house where all of the relatives gathered for the Fourth of July BBQ. The staff is super friendly, compliant, and efficient. The food is simple and outstanding.

The Oyster Bar serves certified oysters from registered beds from the Apalachicola. A dozen are fresh -- fresh as in shucked before your eyes -- tasty, large, and, normally, a dozen is 13-14 to make up for any little ones. On a very happy note, when they find a substandard oyster either visually before opening, tapping before opening, or after opening, they throw it away. The dining room tray full of oysters is placed before you with a plastic sleeve of saltine crackers and four to six kinds of hot sauce. And, a dozen oysters is cheap! They even shuck fresh oysters to go! The plastic lidded to-go container doesn't look like much, but the contents are outstanding.

The Oyster Bar serves chili dogs. Ann refined the process over the years. The buns are steamed. The wieners cook in a pot of water. Ann makes dry chili from scratch in a pot next to the wieners. The chili is phenomenal. The assembly line is a delight: steamed bun, boiled wiener, simmered chili, then, they pile your condiments atop: ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions, mayonnaise. You can add one of several commercials sauces including Tabasco sauce, or, you can add some homemade sauces that go from warm and friendly to serious pain and suffering.

Ann's Ancient Chinese Secret Iced Tea is made fresh daily. She makes sweet and unsweet. The sweet is a little too sweet for me, so, she consents to make me a mixed drink of half and half: half sweet and half unsweet.

Ann makes hamburgers, but I never messed with success. I stayed with hotdogs and oysters.

The Oyster Bar special is two hot dogs any way you want them, chips, a drink, and a freshly baked brownie. They're from a mix, but, hey, freshly baked is freshly baked if it's a good mix.

About the servants and the servers. Ann owns the restaurant and she is a non-stop service machine. She is polite, attentive, and fast. She makes the circuit from customer to assembly to oyster shucking to refilling tea to cash register and back faster than any human I've ever seen. She knows almost everyone by name. Introduce yourself, and, she will know another by name. Vivian is her daughter and almost as fast as mom. Kenny is the son-in-law, and, he's a prince.

There is nothing negative to say about the inside of The Oyster Bar. Everyday after closing, she cleans it including mopping the floors. She shuts it down for two weeks a year and cleans it and paints it.

The outside saw better days. The Oyster Bar is in an old drive-in restaurant. It could use some work, but that work would raise the price of oysters and hot dogs, so, I let it go.

A small quirk is the potato chips are by the door as you enter. You need to remember to grab your chips before you sit. Otherwise, you get to roundtrip the chip stand.

My 'special' is three chili dogs, two chips, half and half. It works out to approximately $5.50.

I think the price of oysters increased, and, now, Ann charges a little more than $4,50 a dozen.

Go. Try it once. Fall in love. Go back again and again.

I have never had a bad experience here. Excellent chili dogs (from a chili dog expert) and the oysters are consistently as good as I've ever had. Great service too