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\n The lobster rolls still arrive under a pile of matchstick fries.
\n Photo: Matthew Schneier\n <\/p>\n
Mary\u2019s Fish Camp<\/a> was such a West Village institution that it was easy to overlook it until it was gone. Like Pearl, the nearby seafooderie from which it grew and then acrimoniously split, Mary\u2019s soldiered on for many years after its new-kid-on-the-block status faded, supported by devoted regulars well into the second decade of the 21st century. Then that great New York City antagonist, real estate, did it in. The Mary\u2019s building on Charles Street changed hands and, unable to come to terms with her new landlords, Mary Redding pulled up stakes in 2024. Unlike Pearl<\/a>, which had closed two years before, Mary\u2019s has returned<\/a>. \u201cFor the last two and a half years, I\u2019ve just been looking, really freaking hard,\u201d Redding, trim and salty at 60, tells me by phone. \u201cThis is where my community is. I\u2019ve lived in the Village for 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years later, Mary\u2019s is back in business a few blocks away, a return trumpeted by her devoted fans. (\u201cOh happy day,\u201d posted<\/a> former neighbor Sarah Jessica Parker.) Her deliverance came via another longtimer: the Lloves family, the proprietors of Sevilla<\/a>, the 90-year-old Spanish restaurant that was her across-the-street neighbor on Charles Street, own the building. For decades, Redding had seen owner Jos\u00e9 Lloves show up and work his dining room, and he had seen her in hers. \u201cI think we just shared the same work ethic,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n So Mary\u2019s has a new berth and, for the most part, the same everything else. Her lobster roll is still a mini-mountain of meat and mayo, her fries still matchsticks, her sweet-pea pancakes available on the side. \u201cI\u2019m not gonna open a chicken restaurant after two years,\u201d she said. \u201cI had a great product. I had a great staff. We just picked up where we left off.\u201d<\/p>\n \n The clam roll. I can still recommend Mary\u2019s lobster roll, even if she might wish I didn\u2019t. \u201cI can\u2019t stand the lobster roll,\u201d she told me. \u201cI make a great one, but you know it\u2019s not a moneymaker.\u201d At \u201cmarket price\u201d ($55 the afternoon I went) that may be hard to believe, but Redding insists on cooking, shelling, and assembling each roll from scratch, rather than use vacuum-sealed, pre-picked lobster meat, which makes them a time-consuming, low-margin best seller. I want to note that while I enjoyed her spicy Florida lobster gazpacho \u2014 a cool, spicy cup bobbing with vermillion-red knuckles and a bargain at $16 \u2014 I loved her clam roll, slathered with celery remoulade and piled high with crisp-fried clam bellies, even more.<\/p>\n The afternoon I went, a spirit of old Mary\u2019s pervaded, from the potted plants that used to make up an ad hoc garden on Charles Street to the former customers at the table, a gray-headed man clocking the MFC logo and peering through the glass door. The lobster-roll wars of the \u201990s, when Redding and her compatriots battled, sometimes in court, for supremacy, are over; a new guard of roll artists like Nick Tamburo at Smithereens<\/a> and Natalie Borowski\u2019s uni-and-caviar topped version at Greenpoint\u2019s Sailor & Siren<\/a> have risen to meet the moment. But the classics still hit. \u201cEighty percent of my kitchen came back, and 75 percent of my servers were able to come back,\u201d Redding says. You can still finish your meal with a peanut-brittle-topped hot-fudge sundae. Order is restored.<\/p>\n EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Grub Street newsletter.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/9fd69d4ce411621f7d3580294bda85ca57-marysfish-1.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Matthew Schneier\n <\/p>\n