Visitors to Block Island fall into two large classes -- those who leave on the ferry the day they arrive, and those who stay for a while, exploring the island past the waterfront. You might need to spend some time exploring Block Island before you start looking for the perfect combination of food, drink, entertainment, and sunsets, but when you do, you're likely to end up at the Oar.

The Oar opened in 1965 specifically to help host the festivities of Block Island's Race Week -- a place to feed the crowds and help them celebrate the wins and losses of the Island's renouned annual sailing regatta.

To find the Oar, you have to wander to the center of three marinas on Block Island's central lagoon, "the Great Salt Pond", well away from the summer beach crowds and the jam-packed waterfront street that few visitors ever get beyond. Its sign says simply "The Oar, Breakfast, Lunch, Sandwiches, and Dinner", and even that sign is a small one. They don't advertize the restaurant, almost as though "if you don't know how to find us, you don't deserve to eat here."

But if you do find them, you're in for a treat. That is, if you're into casual dining, fantastic sunsets, and the house drink "mudslides".

Show up just before sunset, on the weekend during the summer, and you'll be treated with beautiful views from the Oar's deck.

The food at the Oar is casual and reasonably priced, especially for Block Island. Sandwiches of varous kinds, mostly. The house specialty -- at least the house favorite -- is the lobster roll. Big meaty pieces of lobster in a bun. They sell dozens a night most nights, and can barely keep up with the orders on really busy nights.

Others prefer their large, juicy hamburgers served with fries. On a hot summer day it just seems the right thing to eat with a cold beer.

If you can't find a place on the deck, don't panic, even the sights inside are worth looking at. The restaurant is decorated with hundreds of oars. Yes, oars, like the restaurant's name. The kind of thing that you use to paddle from your sail boat to shore.

After a race win, a birthday, or whatever, people come to the Oar restaurant to celebrate. During the party, the revelers present an Oar to their guest of honor and choose a place to display it.

There it remains for all eternity, mounted to a wall or dangling from a ceiling for all to see, so that everyone knows that Bob got engaged or Bill made his first solo sailing trip or Sally has finally gotten that novel published.

During Race Week, the bar runs full blast, with 15 bartenders in the party tent serving beer and mudslides as fast as they can make them. What's in a mudslide? Among other things, Kahlúa, Bailey's Irish Cream, and vodka -- a potent drink to warm you in the cool Block Island evening breezes as you watch the sun set over the old Coast Guard Station.

You can call them at 401/466-8820, and if you sail in and dock in the Block Island Boat Basin, you'll have no trouble finding them. Otherwise, good luck getting there -- the password to get in is "Paul sent me".

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