Short & Main

I did enjoy my dinner here. Service was from our waitress was great. The host who greeted us was a bit on the Emo side when we walked in… like a hipster. Pizza was good, but a little too small for the price charged, and seemed a bit skimpy. Meatballs were great, but like the size of the Swedish meatballs at Ikea… kind of small. Wine list was fantastic as well…

Excellent. Let me count the ways:
Oysters are amazing
Pizza is approaching audacious in its various concoctions, but easy on the palate.
Meatballs are to die for.
Staff attentive and friendly.
Great wine, beer, booze selections.
Very well done, folks. Thank you.

This place was fantastic! The place was busy the entire night however it never felt like that with the staff there. While we waiting for our seats to open (10 minute wait) the host came over and gave us water and soon after the bar manager came over to see if we would like anything else to drink. Once seated we were taken care of right away. The pizza was delicious, marvelous. I highly recommend this place to those who love great pizza and thee best staff!

We went there on a sunday evening of a holiday weekend and it was packed. Luckily, although my wife and I didn’t have a reservation, they were able to get us two seated at the raw bar, after a ten minute wait, which ended up being a nice spot.
Drink menu was great and the two cocktails we got were top notch. We splurged on a dozen oysters, which were pricey but delicious. We followed that with the beet and tuna salad, which was our favorite! It was a great combination of flavors. (Meanwhile the lady sitting next to us got the fish with beans which looked very sizable and very good.)
Then we shared a pizza with homemade sausage and spinach. It was charred black on the bottom — which I liked but my wife didn’t — but I expected as much from a nice wood fire oven. We were sad it didn’t have tomato on it (we didn’t read the description carefully enough), and the meat was very sparse, but it was still tasty.
Finally we ended the dinner with two stouts and the gelato/​caramel/​cookie dessert. It was really great; the caramel was very rich and flavorful. Our waitress gave us an extra cookie and scoop of gelato because she said she had taken too long to bring it out, but we hadn’t even noticed any delay, so that was a pleasant surprise.
Service was fast and efficient; they cleared plates quickly, staggered the food nicely, and replenished our water bottle without us even noticing. The environment was crowded, but it never felt overwhelming, nor was it too loud. Where we were seated we felt like we had a private area, and it was nice to watch the cooks. All in all, it was a very nice dining experience.

Terrible. If you like bread with a little sauce and even less cheese… never going back. It was a waste of 36.00 for two.

We had dinner at Short and Main tonight! Everything was excellent.
The appetizers, the salads and of course the pizzas were great.
And the beer was great too… I loved everything… it was worth the drive from Maine!!!

This is one of my favorite, although expensive, places to eat. The food is fresh and clean. I’ve not been disappointed yet. The menu is small and changes frequently. Service is always good and if you can dash in at 5pm, grab a coveted bar stool. to eat dollar oysters… love it! If you are someone who needs a diet coke (they make their own sodas) and sandwhich, this place is not for you. Only drawback is that it gets really, really noisy. And, someone needs to take a good look at the bathrooms; they could use a deep cleaning and touch up.

Spent the weekend on Cape Ann and bumped into this gem. Was seated immediately at the oyster bar. Didn’t try the pizza since the other menu items were pretty unusual and I wanted to try them out. House breads were delicious, and the beet appetizer is the most amazing preparation of beets in a salad I have ever had. Menu changes daily and I will definitely be back.

This place was a bit of a surprise. Amazing atmosphere and located on a beautiful downtown street.
If your looking for just pizza, I would try somewhere else. The misses loved it, but I was not a fan. The real surprise for us was the meatball appetizer. Simply unbelievable! Better than anything on the North End that we have had.
Great restaurant with good service and food.

Reminded me of being back in Umbria, Italy. Great selection of Neapolitan foods, including seafood and flatbread. Will be back.

We visited on a Saturday night w a group of 4. Place was nice inside, not that busy.
Generally, the menu was oysters, appetizers, and wood pizza.
Overall, service was good — friendly and attentive, refilling my water about 50 times — that night equaling the number of glasses of wine I drank.
We had a number of bottles of Italian wine, all of which were described fairly well by the waitress. I wasn’t that impressed with them (I like full bodied reds).
We shared 3 pizzas between the 4 of us, which was plenty (took ½ pizza home) along w 2 appetizers of meatballs. Generally the pizzas were fine — nice thin crust and layer of ingredients.
–sausage w mozzarella: disappointing, very little sausage or flavor
–mushroom: fair
–prosciutto: really good
The meatballs were big, came in a pair, well seasoned, very flavorful, and in a good, tasty sauce — really liked them, and I’m quite picky about meatballs.
Solid meal.

Another Gloucester gem! First time and definitely not our last. Cozy atmosphere with fantastic menu. Nice selection of oysters and fantastic pizzas. Great selection of craft beers.
Price is good, well worth it.

4.5 stars. Loved this place. My favorite location in Gloucester so far. The Prosciutto Pizza was lovely looking, but it actually took a bit of a back seat to the simpler sausage and red sauce pizza. Top notch red sauce. Excellent crust: they make it thin, and there was a bit of a carbon taste at places, yet no signs of burning, and it was the right amount of chewy at the same time. Pretty good cocktails, and some nice beers… my favorite was from the always awesome Grimm (a mild sour with a pineapple explosion). Good oyster selection. And yeah, um, I’m still a dude, but the hostesses and waitstaff were 100% 5 star babes. I know, I’m a bad man.

A happily unexpected find in Gloucester. Amid all the many bar food fare joints lies this gem with its delicious, super fresh ingredients showcased in the large open kitchen. It is one of the only woodfired pizza places I’ve been to that doesn’t leave you reeking like a campfire.
Beautiful food, intensely flavored with high quality ingredients. My only complaint is that they’re not open for lunch so I couldn’t return the next day.

I love Short and Main. I love the fact that Short and Main has dollar oyster nights in the first and last hour of service every day.
Their pizzas are out of this world! My favorite is the Margherita pizza, mostly because I don’t like to go too extravagant, I like simple things. This pizza comes out piping hot, and delicious.
This is my favorite restaurant in Gloucester so far, but I’m willing to try the owner’s other restaurant, The Market.
— Nico
My sister Amelie loves it, too!

Where to start? If you have to wait for a table go upstairs to play Ping Pong…
The food was amazing if your tired from all the fried food this is the place, all the appetizers were delicious, the eggplant and the meat balls to die for. We had 2 kinds of pizza WOW.
The crew was great and the music fantastic.

Just dropped in for a late night snack. A $ 12 glass of wine and $ 6 for amazingly fresh and delicious oysters. Love this place

Came here on a quiet Sunday night. There were maybe 2 other parties there at the time.
We ordered 3 oysters each. Again, my favorites were the Island Creek oysters.
The pizza I ordered was the Salsiccia. Very good and very flavorful, I even had leftovers and it was good the next day.
However, my favorite was the Amatriciana pizza. My boyfriend ordered it and shared a slice with me. Bursting with flavors and fatty goodness. I would come here again just for that pizza.

I’m a Los Angeles traveler here for my sister’s wedding in Gloucester. I’ve been to good pizza places in LA like Mozza.
The Amatriciana pizza is seriously one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had. It had so much flavor. The tomato had great acidity, and the guanciale was so savory.
I started with three of their oysters. The island creek was my personal favorite. I also had the suppli antipasti, which was OK, and the Caitlin’s little gems insalate, which I enjoyed.
Even with those starters, split among 4 people, I finished my Amatriciana pizza. It was just so good.
If you happen to be in Gloucester, this is definitely a place to visit if you’re in the mood for some great pizza. The Amatriciana, especially, was such a treat. I’ll definitely be thinking about this pizza every now and then back in LA.

Consistently way above average.
4.5 stars is warranted for Short and Main. My wife and I have now been here several times over the past year or so and have not been disappointed once. After reading some of the other reviews here on Unilocal,I thought it might be useful to clarify a couple of points so that you have the right expectations about this place.
1. Yes, the oyster deal is unbeatable. Even when the $ 1 special is not running, the quality and cost still beats the pants off of Legal or other seafood places. If you like oysters even a little bit, this is a great place to try several different varieties and learn more.
2. The bar and the cocktails. I cannot believe that more reviews do not mention the quality of the bar when it comes to specialty cocktails, spirits and the creativity of the staff. My most recent experiences have been with Eric and Krista and both are highly skilled and inventive. I’ve been to Drink in Boston, the bar at Craigie on Main in Cambridge and others and this staff and bar are competing at that level. Now, if you come here asking for a Patron Margarita or a Grey Goose and Tonic, you might be challenged to branch out a little — they specialize in smaller (BETTER!) spirits and inventive concoctions. I can see where this might put some people off — so come with your creative side open to new ideas, or just order a glass of wine or beer.
3. The menu is limited and yes, the pizza is very thin crust. Check out the menu online and you will see what I mean, not a huge number of options but they vary daily (or at least weekly — not sure). The pizzas are very good but if you think you are coming for a Pizzeria Uno Deep Dish pizza, you won’t find it here.
4. It gets crowded on weekends, especially in the summer months. Probably not a shock, but in the summer when there are many visitors in town, this place gets hard to egt into on a weekend night. Go early and hang out near the bar. It gets pretty cozy and you have to watch out for servers trying to get through — but see #2 above. It’s worth it.
5. The restaurant is in a converted storefront. My wife and I asked one hot summer night if they were going to change out the windows or do other changes to the building and the manager (Matt) explained that they are severely limited about what they can do because of the lease they are in and what the building owner will let them do. Perhaps the owner will do some renovations in the future… but then of course he will probably want to renegotiate the lease and raise prices, which the restaurant would have to pass on… so I kind of don’t want to see this happen! :)
6. Parking — street parking only but except for the aforementioned summer weekends, usually not a problem –though I have had to do a loop and make another pass from time to time.
7. Live music and another (smaller) bar upstairs. Yet another great place in Gloucester to check out some live music and maybe do some impromptu dancing. Popped up there the other night after dinner and it was great.
That’s it — hope this is helpful. See you in downtown Gloucester.