The last shuck is coming for the city’s first all-purpose oyster bar. Maestro SVP is calling it quits in March after 35 years, the last 32 on the Main.

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Maestro SVP founder-owner Ilene Polansky, one of Montreal’s more colourful local characters, cites several reasons for the resto’s departure, not the least of which is that the Main, particularly between Sherbrooke St. and des Pins Ave. where she is located, has lost a lot of its lustre — and business.

The street was the epicentre of this city’s resto/club scene in the 1990s — when Maestro SVP was bivalve central — but that scene has dramatically shifted over the last decade to the southwest, northeast and parts in between. Long gone are such supper-club havens as Buonanotte, Globe and Primadonna.

“My feet hurt and my hands are arthritic after decades of shucking,” Polansky cracks. “It’s time. My lease is over. Business........

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