How to keep the Oyster House fresh?

We always hear about the shiny, new food companies. The Spot is a series about the Philadelphia area's more established establishments and the people behind them.

Sam Mink revived the Oyster House, celebrating its 40th anniversary this month, in 2008. When he bought the place, he brought the traditional fish house back into the Mink family; his father, David, opened the original Sansom Street Oyster House in that space in 1976 and sold it in 2000. Under that ownership, the restaurant decayed.

Sam Mink's reboot of the Oyster House opened at just the right moment to ride a wave of foodie mania straight through the recession that coincided with its rebirth. Mink certainly wasn't trying to tap into the zeitgeist. He was concerned with honoring his family's tradition of owning seafood restaurants - before his father opened Sansom Street Oyster in 1976, his grandfather owned Kelly's on Mole Street going back to the 1940s.

The question Mink faced in 2008 was how to take this century-old restaurant template and make it fresh for a new generation. Now, what was once dated and fusty is something bright, lively, and fun. In some ways, today's Oyster House is a city-defining spot, casting meaningful glances to Philadelphia's past while gazing pointedly, presciently forward.

How has Oyster House managed to be successful while, basically, all the other seafood houses have closed?

One of our biggest challenges, and one of the things we excel in, is that we're always bridging the old school together with the new school. Like snapper soup, let's say. It's a classic Philadelphia seafood-house dish, and you don't see it in many other restaurants at all. Ours is much more modern than the original snapper soup that was here, which was very thick with cornstarch.

Do you think that interest in raw oysters is related to the interest in food that has exploded over the last decade?

Absolutely. I think there are many boutique oyster farms up and down the East Coast now and the West Coast that were not there before. One perfect example is the Cape May salt oyster. There are so many different regions with different unique oysters that people become more interested in them as their palates become more sophisticated.

Oyster House is not a "chef-driven" restaurant. It bucks the trend in that way. Is that on purpose?

Yes. What we're doing here follows the theory, the concept, of my grandfather's restaurant and my father's restaurant after that and now my restaurant. One of the biggest challenges for me was to hire a chef that really understands what we're serving here. While I'm not a chef, I certainly created the outline for the menu. Our mission has always been very clear from the beginning, from my father's day, in 1976, to where we are today. It's serving Philadelphia the freshest seafood at a moderate price, and we continue to do that, and we thrive at it. We're quite successful at it.

Everyone has his own idea about what "moderate" means when it comes to price. Do you ever hear that it's too expensive?

Yes. I mean, I have certainly, over the years, heard that it's expensive or too expensive. We're serving seafood, and seafood is not cheap. We're not getting our seafood from Southeast Asia. We're not importing from China. We're buying seafood that is wild, that is caught by fishermen. But we try to provide things in the restaurant that are very value-driven, like our happy hour. So people can come in and get a dozen oysters for 12 bucks and a beer for $3.

Oyster House: 1516 Sansom St.; 215-567-7683; oysterhousephilly.com

Joy Manning, a writer and editor who has covered food and restaurants in Philadelphia for more than decade, is also the executive editor of Edible Philly and Edible Jersey magazines. Also follow her on Instagram @joymanning.