UK Oyster Guide
June 3rd, 2010Here is an absolutely brilliant pdf guide to the oysters of Great Britain. I’m now itching for an excuse to visit.
Notebook
Check back here for new oyster tastings and reviews of oyster bars and festivals.
Naked Cowboys
May 21st, 2010In retrospect, it seems like a no-brainer that somebody would name an oyster after the Naked Cowboy. The jaunty naughtiness, the devil-may-care attitude, the ample flesh–it’s a perfect match. In this case, the somebody is Chris Quartuccio of Blue Island Oyster Company, who has been harvesting oysters from Long Island Sound for 15 years. Naked Cowboys [...]
Chathams
May 19th, 2010When I evaluate oysters in a retail shop, I use the “fruit rule”–pick the ones that feel heaviest for their size. That usually yields an oyster with firmer meat and shell less likely to shatter during shucking. Those dense oysters just seem to taste better, too. That’s certainly the case with Chathams, an oyster that as [...]
The Perfect Oyster
May 7th, 2010I’ve blogged about Brent Petkau, British Columbia’s OysterMan, before. Now, a new short film by Craig Noble will allow you to savor Brent’s gestalt in person. Here’s a link to the trailer. The whole film will be showing at the New York City Food Film Festival in June.
Gives New Meaning to the term “Oyster Drill”
April 27th, 2010An oyster drill is a nasty marine snail that drills through an oyster’s shell with its saw-like tongue and devours the oyster inside its own shell. But this oyster drill is straight off of Tool Time. I haven’t tried it myself, but you must check out the video for the original song alone.
Eat a Ray, Save the Bay
April 14th, 2010If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em! (Lots more on the Chesapeake debacle in my book The Living Shore.)
Kumos Filling in Nicely
April 8th, 2010Has anyone noticed that the Kumamotos have been really thin in flavor for a few months? I certainly have.They just hate winter, even more than most oysters. Anyway, I’m pleased to say that, in this case, April is the coolest month, because the Kumos are back! You can tell right away when you open them. [...]
New Tool: OysterFinder
March 31st, 2010For all of you who can’t remember whether the Imperial Eagle Channel or the Eagle Rock is the oyster from Puget Sound, fret no more. With the new A-to-Z OysterFinder, you can instantly find any oyster mentioned on this site, regardless of provenance. Cheers!
Oyster Rustlers in France
February 28th, 2010Things are getting a little dicey in Arcachon. It happens here, too, of course. And always has. Jack London worked as an oyster pirate (and an oyster policeman; it’s unclear where his real loyalties lay)in San Francisco Bay around 1900.
Maine Oyster Roundup
February 22nd, 2010Last summer I got to taste oysters from up and down the Maine coast for a piece in Down East magazine. In case you missed the piece, here’s the scoop: As a semi-professional oyster eater, I get asked to taste all sorts of oysters in all sorts of seasons. Generally, I would greet a request [...]
Oyster Stout–The Real Deal!
February 16th, 2010Most so-called oyster stouts are simply smooth, creamy stouts that go well with oysters. But the original, of course, was brewed with bivalves to give it that extra creamy, aphrodisiacal head. Kudos to Island Creek Oysters and Harpoon Brewery for creating their brand new oyster stout, which, together with the Pemaquid Oyster Stout from Maine’s Marshall Wharf [...]
Oyster Party in Burlington Feb 28
February 9th, 2010Join me at Burlington’s Bluebird Tavern on February 28 at 5 p.m. for an evening of oysters (six varieties), wines to match, oyster po’ boys (Vermont’s best), and Harpoon’s Oyster Stout. Could be the most oyster-intensive evening the Green Mountain State has ever seen…
Willapa Bay–Hawk’s Points
January 8th, 2010I recently had the chance to eat a few dozen Hawk’s Point oysters from Willapa Bay on the half-shell, and it clarified something for me: Willapa grows the best Pacific oysters in the world. But it also brought up an old mystery: Why is it so hard to find oysters on the half shell from [...]
Colonial Cocktails
January 8th, 2010From the North Branch of Johns River in South Bristol, Maine (Pemaquid Light territory) comes a new oyster: Colonial Cocktails, grown by longtime shellfishermen Dave Cheney. This is classic oyster terroir, and the oyster delivers: stupendously sweet, briny, and with a surprisingly fruity flavor that you almost never see in east coast oysters. If you see these, [...]
Alaska’s Kachemak Bay Oysters
December 10th, 2009Though I find it hard to believe, the hardworking members of the Kachemak Shellfish Growers Co-op, down at the tip of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, will actually schlep out to their floating oyster nets in the middle of December, land of the midday moon, and haul up oysters and ship them to your door. Crazy! But [...]
Kumos in Japan?
December 10th, 2009I call the Kumamoto “the Chardonnay of oysters” because it’s sweet, fruity, nonintimidating, and everybody likes it. Many consider it the perfect oyster. There are major Kumo farms in Oakland Bay (Puget Sound), Humboldt Bay (California), and Baja (Mexico). The oyster, which is the little cousin of the Pacific oyster that dominates the West Coast oyster [...]
Monster Mystics and Jupiter Points
December 10th, 2009The Mystic oysters coming out of the Noank River right now, longtime favorites of mine, are amazingly robust. In just two years, these babies have reached maximum-half-shell size. You have to stay focused to eat them raw. Their flavor is equally massive: briny, mineral, and more metallic than in the past. Serious, graduate-level oysters. How’d [...]
FDA Loses Its Last Marble
November 11th, 2009No one has ever accused the FDA of being particularly perceptive or grounded, but on October 17 it sallied forth into certifiable nut land with an announcement that, beginning in 2011, it would BAN the sale of raw oysters from the Gulf of Mexico during summer months. That’s right; you won’t be able to get [...]
Oysters Returning to Scotland?
November 11th, 2009The Firth of Forth used to be a vital oyster fishery, producing 30 million native European Flat oysters per year. (This is the same species as the world-famous Belon.) Then overharvesting and pollution–stop me if you’ve heard this one–collapsed the stocks and the oyster went extinct. Or so everyone thought. Recently wild oysters were discovered [...]
The Ultimate Oyster Knife Collection
November 11th, 2009Richard Rush, who maintains the blog Oyster Aficionado began his oyster knife collecting odyssey with a simple question: If the hand is the same, and the oyster is the same, why are the knives so different? This question remains unanswered, though it would make a fine Cultural Anthropology dissertation. In the meantime, if you have a [...]
Oyster & Beer Pairing Nov. 8
October 28th, 2009At Montpelier, Vermont’s own Threepenny Taproom. Join me from 12-2 to sample the best oysters in North America (Olympias, Fanny Bays, Kumamotos, Quonsets, and a few surprises) and some of the rarest beers you’ll ever find.
Puget Sound Oyster Tasting Poster
October 22nd, 2009Here is the coolest poster I’ve ever seen, from graphic designer Katherine Kratzer. It charts the geography and taste characteristics of a variety of Puget Sound oysters in an incredibly helpful and attractive way. You can download the hi-res poster for your personal use here. Businesses (and if you’re an oyster bar, how could you [...]
Oysterpalooza October 28 in Hyannis
October 20th, 2009Oyster Palooza 2009 will be held on Wednesday October 28, 2009 at EMBARGO from 6-9 pm, with 99 cent oysters showcasing a few of Cape Cod’s noteables including Cotuit, Wellfleet, Chatham, and East Dennis. Wine Pairings will be offered by Oyster Bay. This event is hosted by EMBARGO to help promote awareness of fine locally produced shellfish. [...]
Henderson Inlet Oysters
October 20th, 2009One of the newest oysters to hit the market has a fantastic story behind it. Henderson Inlet is a charming estuary in southern Puget Sound, not far from Olympia. For years it was closed to shellfish harvesting due to water quality issues. But in 2003 the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, along with many partners, started a community [...]
How to Become an Oyster Expert
October 19th, 2009Well, you could buy my book, ten bucks and change at Amazon. But say you don’t have ten bucks. In that case, you could also check out this stupendous new site, the brainchild of my friend Richard Rush, who knows more about oysters (and oyster knives; you should see his collection) than anyone I know. [...]
Wellfleet Oysterfest
October 13th, 2009This weekend one of the great events on the oyster calendar goes down in Wellfleet, the world’s most charming oyster town. Wellfleet Oysterfest, way out on the ulnar of Cape Cod, runs all day Saturday and Sunday, October 17-18, and features more Wellfleet oysters and quahogs than you could possibly eat, both raw and cleverly [...]
Go Shuck an Oyster
October 5th, 2009A very cool new blog and website for osteaphiles. Check it out!
The (Really) Big Oyster
September 26th, 2009I knew oysters could get a lot bigger than we tend to see them, but I thought that meant a foot long and fiftenn years old. This sucker, from a Chinese museum, must have more than a hundred. Thanks to Dr. Loren Coen, Director of the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation Marine Laboratory, for this great photo.
New Oyster Book Arrives
September 7th, 2009Here it is, folks, the perfect gift for the ostreaphile who has everything–including my previous book. If you’ve developed a reverence for the beloved bivalve and want to know why this puts you in good company for the past 164,000 years, and why oysters just may be a key to our future sustainability, this is [...]
What’s Keeping New York Raw?
August 26th, 2009Here’s a quick video tour of raw bars in Manhattan. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.
What Would Henry Hudson Do?
August 25th, 2009Four hundred years ago the great navigator Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor and discovered an estuary laden with ginormous oysters, which the local Manahatta were happy to serve up for him. On September 10, Slow Food NYC and Slow Food Amsterdam celebrate that momentous occasion with piles of local oysters, local beer, and [...]
Gay Island: A Maine Oyster of Another Sort
August 8th, 2009Unusual oysters grown in the open ocean south of Cushing Harbor, Gay Islands are a real treat. They are one of the best examples of a style I think of as “beach oysters.” With almost no freshwater influence, Gay Islands have a bracing North Atlantic flavor that comes from the fully marine environment and the fact that they [...]
The Best Oyster in the World
July 7th, 2009This week a friend drove down a box of Johnny Flynn’s Colville Bay oysters from Prince Edward Island. I hadn’t had them in a while, and it reminded me of what I knew and had forgotten: They are, quite simply, the best oysters in the world. I mean, this was the Fourth of July, when [...]
Cool June = Tasty Oysters
July 1st, 2009If you live on the Eastern Seaboard you know it was a demoralizing June. Rain, fog, and temperatures more appropriate to the R months. But there is a silver lining in all those clouds, and it is that we’re getting an extra month of quality oysters this year. Normally a young oyster’s thoughts turn to [...]
City Fish, Orlando
May 17th, 2009It looked so right. I was on my way to a book event in Orlando (that’s already an oxymoron, and so was I for not knowing better) and suddenly an oyster bar loomed ahead. And not just any oyster bar, but a super-cool, industrial-tech, shiny black and silver oyster bar. It was called City Fish, [...]
B&G Oyster Festival
May 17th, 2009My apologies to certain larger and better-known oyster festivals (names withheld; you know who you are), because I must hereby proclaim that you just got SCHOOLED in the art of the oyster festival by Boston’s B&G Oysters, which put on one hell of a show on May 4 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the [...]
Shigokus
March 2nd, 2009I’m proud to announce the birth of a brand-new oyster. Shigoku, the latest development from Taylor Shellfish, is the most encouraging thing to happen in 2009 thus far. It’s a Willapa Bay oyster, made extra-special through Taylor’s genius. They grow the oysters in floating bags, like many a Pacific oyster, but these are attached to [...]
Ned’s Island
March 2nd, 2009There was this old Native American guy named Ned, and he lived all alone on a tiny island in Long Island Sound because he liked it that way. Ned is long gone, but the island is forever named for him. I don’t know if he liked oysters or not, but the waters off his island were [...]
New Portland Oyster Bar
February 1st, 2009Word on Bivalve Street is that a nifty new oyster bar has opened in Portland, Oregon. EaT is styled on the New Orleans model, with creole cuisine and a stand-up-only, white-tiled oyster bar. Unlike said bayou models, EaT features many varieties of oysters each day, with Hama Hamas, Nootkas, Olympias, and Oregon’s own Yaquina Bays [...]
Tour de Champagne
January 16th, 2009Here’s the snazziest event I’ve seen in quite a while. The Tour de Champagne, which visits seven cities each year, is an evening when you get to take your Champagne knowledge to a new level–accompanied by top-notch food, all created to complement the Champagne. Your ticket entitles you to sample the wares of twenty different [...]
The Best-Kept Secret
January 13th, 2009The best-kept secret in oysters right now has got to be Salt Pond Selects, raised by Dave Roebuck in Point Judith Pond, Rhode Island. I tried them for the first time last June and was blown away. Here’s what I wrote: “Another heavyweight from Point Judith Pond, Rhode Island (home of Moonstones), Salt Ponds [...]
Stump Sound Singles, Anyone?
January 13th, 2009Ostreaphile Jimmy Bateman writes that, ”A native of North Carolina, I feel we have some of the best oysters to offer. My favorite is the Stump Sound Single, from Sneeds Ferry, NC. The local clusters are damn good too!” Any other Stump Sound Single fans out there? I don’t know the oyster, but I look forward to [...]
What I’m Drinking
January 1st, 2009‘Tis the season to consume many oysters, and to wash them down with libations of all kinds. Bubbly comes to mind this week, and you can’t go wrong there. In fact, if you’d like to go really, really right there, join me at the Tour de Champagne, when we will choose (after rigorous testing) the [...]
A Mystic-al New Year
December 28th, 2008Some good news to kick-start 2009. Mystic oysters, raised with great care and awareness by Steve Plant just off the Connecticut coast in Fishers Island Sound, are now available direct. I sampled three dozen this week, and every single one was astonishingly firm, deep-cupped, and full-bodied. It’s rare that you don’t find at least one [...]
Calling All Oyster and Wine Producers
December 18th, 2008Do you grow a brilliant oyster that I’ve thus far overlooked? Or an oyster that I’ve covered before, but is now reaching its midwinter peak of savory perfection and is ripe for new attention? Or maybe you make a white wine so crisp and minerally that it pairs with oysters for that oft-sought, rarely-achieved “Bliss [...]
Royster with the Oyster
October 27th, 2008For anyone who has never been to Shaw’s Crab House’s annual Royster with the Oyster celebration, you are hereby served notice that you must put it on next year’s calendar. Where else can you enjoy not just an evening but a full week’s worth of oyster-themed mayhem, including nightly slurping contests (and those Chicago boys [...]
Maine Oyster Festival
October 14th, 2008From out of nowhere, a new oyster festival leaps into the elite ranks of oyster events. The Maine Oyster Festival, which went down on October 12 at the handsome Union Bluff Meeting House, just feet from the sea in York Beach, was everything an oyster fest should be. What this means is that the raw [...]
Scorton Creek Oysters
October 9th, 2008I recently attended the Shellfish Shindig at the Sam Adams Brewery in Boston. It was a great event, and some of my favorite oysters were on hand, including Island Creeks, Dennis, and Cuttyhunks. But there was a new oyster in town, and it was so plump and ivory-colored that it really stood out. A taste [...]
Win 4 Dozen Oysters
October 9th, 2008Here’s a fun find. Marx Foods in Seattle is holding a contest: Tell them what you’d do with four dozen fresh Puget Sound Oysters. The best idea gets the oysters.
New Edition Released!
August 29th, 2008The expanded and updated paperback edition of the James Beard Award-winning A Geography of Oysters hits stores September 16. More oysters! More oyster bars and festivals! More weird oyster trivia! Order it from Amazon today and get it absurdly cheap.
Coming Soon to a Festival Near You
August 29th, 2008It’s that time again–oyster festival season. And I’ll be appearing at a few of ‘em, so come on out to chat in person and pick up a signed copy of the new expanded and updated edition of A Geography of Oysters. Sept 14 Shellfish Shindig, Boston Beer Company, Boston, MA Celebrity taster and oyster [...]
The Olympia Expedition
July 31st, 2008In the early 1990s, a Canadian marine scientist named Brian Kingzett was engaged in an ecologist’s dream job. The province of British Columbia wanted to know how much of its Swiss-cheese coastline had the potential for shellfish aquaculture, and it hired Kingzett to find out. Kingzett was following a long line of explorers, including James [...]
Spring Oysters
June 12th, 2008Everybody talks about fall being the season for oysters, and it is, but recent tastings have convinced me that the narrow window for spring oysters—think May, plus a week on either end—provides some of the tastiest of the year. Fall oysters are filled with glycogen, but spring oysters have an altogether brighter flavor, heavy on [...]
Salt Ponds
June 12th, 2008Another heavyweight from Point Judith Pond, Rhode Island (home of Moonstones), Salt Ponds are oyster-lover’s oysters: big, bountiful, and intensely flavorful. If you made a demi-glace with seawater, you’d approximate the concentrated tidepool brine of a Salt Ponds. They are unusually metallic for a virginica, with hints of the iron and petrol flavors found in [...]
James Beard Award
June 9th, 2008What’s that, you didn’t know that on Sunday, June 8, at Lincoln Center, “A Geography of Oysters” scored a James Beard Award as one of the best food books of the year? I’d like to think that JB himself, a prodigious oyster eater, would have approved. If you’ve been holding out, waiting to see if [...]
Oyster Invitational Challenge–Results
May 15th, 2008On April 7, 2008, at the Westin Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, twenty all-star virginicas competed for the title of Best Tasting Oyster in a major blind tasting. Many of my favorites, including Moonstones, Watch Hills, Island Creeks, Pemaquids, Katama Bays, Mystics, and Totten Virginicas, threw their hats in the ring. The judges included such bivalve virtuosos [...]
Katama Bays
April 21st, 2008Famously sandy Katama Bay, home of postcard-perfect beaches, separates Chappaquiddick Island from the rest of Martha’s Vineyard. Katama, which means “crab-fishing place” in the original Wampanoag, is a shellfish bonanza. Clamdiggers and scallopers cruise its shallow waters, and oysters sit happily on that nice, solid substrate and get scrubbed clean in the currents, accounting for [...]
New Points
April 21st, 2008On six acres of Dyers Creek, one of the most remote peninsulas in Virginia, Jack White grows the most beautiful and robust oyster on the Chesapeake. Lovingly tended by White, New Points develop indestructible shells that seem almost like bottomless pits: the oyster keeps going down, down, all the way to the end of the [...]
Snow Hills
April 21st, 2008If you ever dreamed about growing oysters in some romantic tidewater paradise, Snow Hills will fit your fantasy. Grown north of Chincoteague in the Maryland end of Chincoteague Bay, Snow Hills are an improvement on the famous Chincoteague Salts. Farther up the bay, they get a little less ocean water, giving them a perfect (to [...]
Island Creeks Win Oyster Invitational Challenge
April 21st, 2008On April 7, 2008, at the Westin Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, twenty all-star virginicas competed for the title of Best Tasting Oyster in a major blind tasting. Many of my favorites, including Moonstones, Watch Hills, Island Creeks, Pemaquids, Katama Bays, Mystics, and Totten Virginicas, threw their hats in the ring. The judges included such bivalve virtuosos [...]
Blue Points
April 1st, 2008Yes, Blue Points, that most abused of oyster appellations. But not just any Blue Points. After a century of exile, real Blue Points are once again growing in their ancestral home—Long Island’s Great South Bay. Thank Chris Quartuccio, who used to make his living diving for wild oysters in Long Island Sound. A huge set [...]
Dennis
April 1st, 2008Dennis, a town on the flexing bicep of Cape Cod, grows some of its most quintessential oysters—briny, rich, and supple, like a well-seasoned tenderloin. Grown by John and Stephanie Lowell of East Dennis Oyster Farm, these deep-cupped bivalves give you everything you’d expect from a Wellfleet—more reliably. In fact, they won Best Oyster at the [...]
Quivet Necks from the Oyster Company
March 24th, 2008The Oyster Company Raw Bar and Grill 202 Depot Street, Dennisport, MA; 508-398-4600 I have a special place in my heart for restaurants that serve their own oysters. That’s the case with this Cape Cod gem, called “The best oyster bargain in Massachusetts” by the Boston Globe. Owner Gerry Bojanowski keeps the twisting zinc bar [...]
Mystic
March 24th, 2008Like a spruce-lined snowscape, the green and white ridges of Mystic oysters scream winter in New England to me. Grown by the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative in Fisher Island Sound, off the Connecticut coast, Mystics are as pretty an east coast oyster as you’ll ever see. For that we can thank Steve Plant, who resists shortcuts [...]
The Oystertini Revisited
March 10th, 2008After I put a recipe for the Oystertini in my book, I received a letter from Dr. Gil Levin, a Maryland inventor, setting the record straight: “I must call your attention to a gross injustice you commit on p. 253 by taking ‘all the blame’ (meaning the glory) for the oysterini. Rowan, the oysterini is MY [...]
The Oceanaire
March 4th, 2008I don’t usually list restaurant groups, but I must make an exception for The Oceanaire, because they get all the little touches just right. When you walk into any of the sixteen 1930s-style Oceanaires (San Diego, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston) you stare straight [...]
Neptune Oyster
February 25th, 2008Boston has many a good oyster bar, but it’s got nothing else quite like Neptune Oyster. In fact, neither does anywhere else. Look around this tiny North End gem and you’re convinced you are in a Paris bistro—that is, until you look at the menu, when you instantly know you’re in New England. Neptune carries [...]
Pickle Points
January 3rd, 2008Okay, Pickle Points aren’t a new discovery, but I did discover this New Year’s Eve that they are absolutely plump and creamy-sweet right now. Pickle Point is a point shaped like, yes, a pickle (squint hard), and it’s in PEI National Park, not far from Raspberry Point. Indeed, the same man, Scott Linklater, grows both [...]
Ryleigh’s Oyster House
December 10th, 2007Baltimore’s oyster renaissance just took a huge leap forward with the birth of Ryleigh’s Oyster House in 2007. Baltimore, with its strategic spot at the head of the Chesapeake Bay, used to be the queen of oyster towns, with more shucking houses than any other. But its fortunes declined along with the Chesapeake oyster. [...]
American Mussel Harvesters
December 10th, 2007Great news for oyster eaters everywhere: American Mussel Harvesters is now taking direct orders online. Especially if you live in New England, they should be your first stop for a variety of quality oysters. You’ll get ‘em faster and fresher than from anywhere else. You can select between Pacific and Atlantic varieties, and use the [...]
Quonset Points
December 10th, 2007Quonset Points, the classic Narragansett Bay oyster, are at their peak of flavor right now and worth seeking out. The ones I just had were brinier than I remembered Quonsets being, with the same deep cups they always have. The bottom shells had an extraordinary orangeish color that I’ve never seen on an oyster before—no [...]
Winter Points
December 1st, 2007Stop the presses. A relatively new, truly great oyster has arrived. Winter Points must take their place beside Glidden Points and Pemaquids as the quintessential Maine oysters. (In fact, they always have been. Though they are new on the market, the area where they live has been a saltwater farm for more than 300 [...]
Save the Drake’s Bay Oyster
November 10th, 2007In case you haven’t heard, the National Park Service has announced that it plans to shut down the Drake’s Bay Oyster Farm in 2012. Background: Drake’s Estero is a pristine estuary that delves miles into Point Reyes National Seashore. The oyster farm, which has been there since the 1950s, has the cleanest waters of any [...]
Wild Chathams
October 28th, 2007Wild oysters from Chatham, right at Cape Cod’s elbow, have grabbed the yellow jersey in the competition for Best Fall Oyster ’07. These beauties, hand-picked at low tide by two friends of mine from Chatham’s ancient oyster ponds and tide flats, have four-to-six-inch, deep-cupped shells of white and metallic gray-green, touched with bits of rust [...]
Hanks Oyster Bar
October 16th, 2007The title for “Best Oyster Fun in DC” goes to Hank’s Oyster Bar, which opened in 2005 in DC and became a huge hit. A second, more casual branch opened in Oldtown Alexandria last month, for lunch as well as dinner. Partners Sandy Lewis and Jamie Leeds have created a warm and intimate setting, and [...]
Dragon Creeks
October 6th, 2007A new oyster to look for in the Chesapeake Region is Dragon Creek. Coming from Nomini Creek, up on the Eastern Shore, with a salinity of about 15 ppt, it was the mildest oyster I’d had in some time—a classic Chesapeake style. Dragon Creeks have a nice four-inch size, good plumpness, and pretty, creamy shells. [...]
Unbeatable Moonstones
October 3rd, 2007For one night, on October 2nd, Bear Pond Books, in Montpelier, Vermont, was the hoppingest oyster joint in the landlocked states. Those who attended heard a lively reading from, ahem, a new oyster book called A Geography of Oysters and then filled themselves with four varieties of oysters and six wines and sakes. The oysters: [...]
Fishers Island Oysters
September 26th, 2007The award for best oysters of the fall so far goes to Fishers Island. I sampled all three of their varieties this week and was stunned by the fresh, firm, sweet meats. Fishers Island, just off the Connecticut coast, has been one of the most important oyster hatcheries for decades. Many of the best oysters [...]
Join the Oyster Revolution
September 18th, 2007Here’s my favorite shirt I’ve seen in some time. It comes from (and is modeled by) Brent Petkau. Brent, producer of the famed Courtesan oyster of remote Cortes Island, in the far reaches of British Columbia, is a great enthusiast of All Things Oyster. You can get the shirt, the oyster, smoked oysters (among the [...]
Sake with Oysters
August 21st, 2007Sho Chiku Bai Nama Sake, an organic sake brewed by Takara Sake in Berkeley, is the best U.S. sake with oysters, and one of the best drinks with oysters period. Its extremely smooth, full-bodied, and fruity flavor screams out for Kumamotos or a sweet Pacific oyster like a Hog Island Sweetwater, but it also pairs [...]
Oyster Wines
August 21st, 2007Recently, a number of people have been asking me about pairing wine with oysters. It’s a much more difficult combo than many people think: most oysters slay most white wines, due to their high umami content. But when it works, it’s truly a match made in heaven. Here are my seven rules for making it [...]
Canadian Oysters in August
August 10th, 2007Visited Maestro S.V.P. in Montreal to see what was new with Canadian oysters. Had a plate of Beausoleils, which were godawful: tiny, shrunken, a couple even tasted spawny. Now, Beausoleils are consistently good (if small) oysters, so this just confirms my rule to Never Eat Oysters in August! A health alert the next day of [...]