Apalachicola Bay is a time capsule. Unlike the rest of the country, which either harvests oysters using motorized dredges pulled behind boats, or farms oysters in bags and cages, Apalachicola Bay is full of oystermen working the bars the same way they have for centuries, using long, wooden-handled tongs to pull the oysters into tiny oysterboats, then culling the oysters by hand, filling sacks, and dropping them off at local restaurants and processors. They can still do that because the bay is just a few feet deep, lending itself more to tongs than to dredges, and, more important, because the bay is in such extraordinarily good health. Unlike pretty much the rest of the country, they haven’t killed their wild oysters yet. They still get an abundant spat set in the bay, enough to keep about 300 oystermen in work.

To get a sense of that work, I headed off at dawn one morning with Kendall Schoelles, a third-generation oysterman. I expected a blocky southerner with Incredible Hulk shoulders, but Kendall is normal sized. Yet somehow he manages to tong oysters for 8 or 9 hours a day.

Oysterboats are simple but functional, with wide sideboards for walking up and down with the tongs. Kendall reaches down with the tongs and feels around, fluffing the bottom a few times to find some solid (i.e., filled) shell and to gather it into the tongs. Then he pulls up 10 or 20 oysters, along with lots of old shell and the odd crab, and dumps everything on the culling board on the bow.

After an hour or two, the pile of oysters is high enough that each new tonging added to the top threatens to tumble overboard, at which point it’s time to cull them. Kendall grabs a culling iron and sets to work.

The culling iron has two metal flanges three inches apart–that’s the legal length for harvesting oysters. Anything smaller gets tossed back to the bottom to grow a little longer. In Apalachicola, it takes oysters 12-18 months to reach three inches, which is wicked fast. Thank those brown, plankton-rich waters for that (which means, thank the Apalachicola River for washing that nice Georgia mud down here).

As larvae, oysters swim around looking for existing shell to attach to. They can actually smell it. They use a gluey substance to attach themselves to the shell, and then they are stuck for life. That’s why oyster reefs are so cohesive, and it’s why most of Kendall’s work day is spent bashing oyster clumps apart with his culling iron. I helped out, and that’s why, two weeks later, my thumb is still a disturbing shade of purple. Those culling irons carry some force.

The good oysters go into sacks. The going rate is $20/sack, up from $12/sack a couple of years ago. That’s for 300 large oysters! Think of that the next time you’re in Grand Central dropping $3 on a single shrimpy bivalve.

A lot of mussels, oyster drills (snails), and other oyster competitors/predators come up with the oysters. These Kendall smashes, and the soupy glob gets tossed overboard, so pretty quick there are swarms of huge catfish around the boat. It’s blissful to be out there, no other boats around, culling oysters, whacking your thumb, smelling the wind and water, listening to the catfish sloshing around the surface, and popping open the occasional oyster and eating it on the spot. (Best I’ve ever had.) At least, it was blissful in April. Kendall says that summer, “95 degrees, no wind,” is brutal, and winter is even worse. He admits that after a life of tonging in all sorts of weather, he hits the painkillers pretty hard in the evenings. Still, he couldn’t bear to be anywhere else, and he has no plans to stop anytime soon.

Personally, I think Apalachicola Bay should be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other than Kendall and a few others who have perspective, most of the oystermen in the area don’t appreciate the beauty and rarity of what they’ve got. Most of the rest of the country doesn’t have a clue. For the traditional way of life to go on in Apalachicola, we all need to seek out those oysters and be willing to pay more for them than we do now. $20 a sack is just nuts for a food that kicks the ass of the finest caviar, and is actually harder to find. But what we really need to do is support the groups that keep the bay healthy. That health is in no way assured, because it depends on the flow of water from the Apalachicola River. That water keeps the bay brackish, which keeps oyster predators out at sea. Anytime the river drops and the bay water turns saltier, the predator surge in and eat a ton of baby oysters. And lately, the river is always low, because it flows down from Georgia, and Atlanta has a little water problem. As the state o Georgia steals more and more of the Apalachicola River’s water to keep Atlanta’s pools full, less and less finds its way to the bay. If this keeps up, at some point oystering in Apalachicola will become unsustainable. That would be a crime. To learn more, you can visit the website of the Apalachicola Riverkeeper.

Better yet, visit Apalachicola itself and learn firsthand what it’s like to tong oysters. Here are a couple of guys who will take you out:

Doug Joyner; 850-524-5985; dougjoyner29@yahoo.com

Oystering trips on the bay. We will teach you how to tong and cull your own oysters from Capt Doug’s oyster boat. You bring the hot sauce and the crackers and we’ll open the oysters for you!

Captain Don Davis; 850-566-4177; trapperdondavis@gmail.com

Captain Don Davis of Carrabelle has been a US Coast Guard licensed captain for over thirty years. Catch your own oysters in beautiful Apalachicola Bay. If weather permits, six hour trips will be taken.

The tiny town of Apalachicola sits on Apalachicola Bay, which forms the bulge in the Florida Panhandle. The bay itself has been formed over eons by the Apalachicola River, the thick, brown, sluggish, gentle giant that drains southern Georgia and much of the Florida highlands. Picture the Mississippi, before the Petro-Industrial Complex found it. The river is lined with protected cypress and tupelo swamps (and it is the source of the world’s finest tupelo honey, but that’s another story), and it discharges a steady flow of rich, sediment-filled water into a warm bay that is just a few feet deep. That’s pretty much the perfect formula for growing oysters: The sediment is full of nutrients, which fertilize phytoplankton, the single-celled plants that oysters strain from the water with their gills. Like all plants, phytoplankton require nutrients, light, and warmth, which the shallow waters of Apalachicola Bay provide in abundance. Add to the mix the barrier islands that ring Apalachicola Bay, which keep the bay relatively calm (a boon for oysters and oystermen both), and relatively brackish (which keeps most oyster predators, which can only thrive in saltwater, at bay), and you have one of the oyster world’s miracle spots.

What makes Apalachicola even better is that it is about 80 miles from Anywhere, which keeps most highly annoying tourists away. The few who make it here are already in the know. And what they know is that if your idea of a good time is to hang out in a small town with a working waterfront, where the handful of restaurants are all obsessed with the freshness of their oysters (many actually have dedicated boats that harvest every day and deliver to the restaurant in the afternoon), and where oysters are not a precious luxury but part of the fabric of town life (see my previous entry to get a sense of that), then Apalachicola just may be the best place on earth.

If you arrive late on a Sunday night, as I did (and in these parts, “late” means after nine), you’ll be out of luck in the oyster department until the following morning. Fortunately, this is one of those few towns that considers breakfast part of the oyster day. I began my morning with a dozen on the half-shell at Caroline’s, and followed that up with Oyster Cakes ’n Eggs (grits on the side, naturally). But I could have easily gone for the oyster omelet, or waited a few hours and tried the oyster tacos, oyster jambalaya, chargrilled oysters, or oysters & artichokes poached in champagne and served in puff pastry.

Next door to Caroline’s is Boss Oyster, which, as you might expect, has a bit of a thing for the beatific bivalve. Both Boss and Caroline’s are on the Apalachicola River, and you’ll spy the Boss Oyster boat out back, shuttling back and forth from the oyster grounds out in the bay. Boss has several pages worth of oyster recipes, everything from oyster po’ boys to oyster stew, plus they’ll Gild the Lily and pile chives, ponzu, wasabi, and flying fish roe on your raw oysters, but really, with oysters this fresh, you should probably accent them with nothing more than a Dos Equis.

Oysters run about $8/dozen in Apalachicola, which is unfathomably cheap from a Northwest or Northeast perspective, so you will want to make the rounds and get a feel for each of the numerous raw bars in town (all within walking, or stumbling, distance). A few recommendations: Hole in the Wall, which has the purest oyster bar feel of anywhere I’ve set foot in quite a while; Up the Creek, which has stunning views of the Apalachicola River and estuary; and The Owl Café, which has a second-floor porch overlooking the frozen-in-time downtown.

And now a bit more about the oysters. I have tasted Apalachicola oysters (or what were passed off as Apalachicola oysters, at any rate) in many oyster bars around the country, and I have generally been disappointed. Usually, they had the blocky shells and watery flavor of a cut-rate, up-bayou Louisiana oyster (which they may have been). Those oysters have given all Gulf Coast oysters a bad name. But a good Apalachicola oyster is a different beast entirely. It has a lively just-off-the-sea vibrancy to it (which never travels successfully), and it is fat and plump with a flavor the marries the briny richness of lobster bisque with the sweet roundness of creamed corn. For that, you’ll probably need to travel to Apalachicola (perhaps for the Florida Seafood Festival in November)—but even there, some oysters are much better than others.

Why?

It took me a while to figure it out.

Numerous “oyster bars,” as the oystermen refer to the low-lying reefs that sometimes rise nearly to the surface, exist throughout Apalachicola Bay. Almost all of them are public, meaning anyone with a license can go harvest them. The names of some of the bars are quite evocative: North Spur, West Lump, Paradise, Bayou Flats, Mast Pole, Picaleen, Cat Point, Haggens Flat, Porters Bar, Dry Bar, East Hole, Cabbage Top (and these are just off the menu at Hole in the Wall). The Apalachicola River empties into the middle of the bay; if the wind is out of the east, all that fresh water heads west; if the wind is out of the west, it heads east. According to Kendall Schoelles, whose family has been tonging oysters off of bottomland they own in the west bay since the 1890s, it takes less than two days of west wind to “salt up” his oysters, as briny water from the Gulf of Mexico blows in through Indian Pass, and the fresh river water heads in the other direction. So, if you like salty oysters (as most of us do), and you find yourself in Apalachicola, lick a finger, stick it in the air, and head for a restaurant that gets its oysters from the side of the bay the wind is coming from. (For the record, Kendall sells his oysters to Tommy Ward of 13 Mile, a local oyster legend. 13 Mile has its own retail store on the Apalachicola waterfront ($4.50/dozen oysters, plus $7 for a knife), and supplies The Owl Café and Hole in the Wall, among many others.

I haven’t even mentioned perhaps the most salient point of all about Apalachicola, the thing that almost brings tears to your eyes. Next post.

How do you know when you’re in Oyster Town, a place where oysters permeate the entire culture? Here are some of the signs to look for:

Living oyster reefs exposed at low tide…

Piles of shell at processing plants on the edge of town…

Making oyster shell the preferred mulch in town…

A ridiculous abundance of oyster bars…

All serving fat, fresh oysters with minimal fuss…

At minimal prices…

And, undoubtedly the most important sign of all, oystermen working the waters by hand…

Where is Oyster Town? There’s only one place in the country where such an earthly paradise could exist? Any guesses?

Look for my complete rundown next week…

Point aux Pins

Long Island Sound, maybe? Cape Cod Bay? Duxbury Harbor? Would you believe Alabama? They’ve got the look of a classic Northeast oyster, but they are Gulf oysters through and through. (Native to Cedar Point, in fact, before the Auburn Shellfish Laboratory gets a hold of them.)  The difference is, they are farmed, and, apparently, that is enough to turn a Gulf oyster into a Northeast oyster. Instead of the superthick shell, these get a nice cup and an urbane black-and-white polish to the shell. This happens because these oysters are raised in cylindrical mesh containers that roll with the tides and tumble the oysters, ensuring that deep cup. The plump meats and healthy ivory color come from the algae-rich waters of Grand Bay, Alabama, where they are grown. I’ve spent a little time in Grand Bay. Here’s what it looks like.

Grand Bay, Alabama

That’s me in blue getting blasted by the airboat, which is another story; the important part is what you don’t see here: industry, of any kind. (You can also see where the name came from.) Grand Bay is pristine. And so are the oysters. Their flavor is a clean, creamed-corn kind of sea, light on brine and big on oysterness; a fine example of what the Gulf can do–and will do more and more, as other individuals begin farming high-quality oysters throughout the Gulf region. For now, look for Point aux Pins in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas.

Hama Hamas, Blue Pools, and a bevy of beautiful whites

Here at The Oyster Guide we decided to ring in the holidays with a wine tasting, pairing six different whites from three different countries with half a dozen different oysters. There were a few duds and a few standouts. The picks of the litter: Screamingly salty Marin Miyagis (from I Love Blue Sea) with a butterscotchy Girard Napa Valley Chardonnay, and wicked briny Mystics with that very same Chard. This is further proof that the old rule about oysters requiring high-acid whites is a bunch of hooey. With very salty oysters from either coast, a rich, full-bodied Chardonnay rounds out the palate and takes away the salt much better. Then again, medium-briny Hama Hamas made a 2011 Crossings Sauvignon Blanc absolutely sing; the watermelon rind of the oysters and grapefruit of the wine both coming to the fore. So sometimes the old rules do apply. Last, Blue Pools (tumbled Hama Hamas) paired with a 2010 Barone Fini Alto Adige, grown high up in the Tyrol, to create an elegant, minerally purity. Yum, and Happy New Year to all. May your 2012 be bristling with bivalves.

Tawny-shelled Ned's Islands

Ned was an old Native American guy who lived all alone on his eponymous island on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. I don’t know if he liked oysters or not, but the waters off his island were thick with ‘em. This is the fabled home of Bluepoints, and that’s the flavor you get in a Ned’s Island oyster. Bluepoints have a checkered past. They were originally from the Great South Bay on the southern coast of Long Island, but after those were wiped out in the 1800s Bluepoint production switched to Long Island Sound, which had the last great wild sets in the area, and that’s where it really took off. Bluepoints became the most popular oysters in the country. But because the name is not trademarked, soon other regions (Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico) began selling their oysters as Bluepoints, and still do. It’s done a terrible disservice to the name, because a good Bluepoint from Long Island Sound (like those harvested by Hillard Bloom Shellfish of Norwalk, Connecticut, the family-owned company that saved Long Island oystering) has wonderfully firm, briny flesh, while many of the ersatz bluepoints tasted like something the plumber freed from the U-curve under your sink. I still hit these fakes in restaurants all the time.

Ned’s Islands have the classic taste, with a lively 27-ppt brine. They are started in a hatchery (using local broodstock), then grown out in off-bottom cages. Any oysters that don’t meet the Ned’s Island specs are culled, meaning you get a deep-cupped, 3-4-inch oyster every time. Up off the bottom, they have access to a tawny-colored algae that covers the shells (very reminiscent of a Quonset Point) and gives them a complex flavor: sweet (at least on this December evening, when, admittedly, most oysters are at their sweetest), perfectly briny, with a lingering, tannic, green pepper finish (almost like a Chinon or other Cabernet franc). They also have a nice crunch, which to me is essential to the pleasure of an oyster.