The Oyster Guide

October 9th, 2008

Here’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.

August 29th, 2008

It’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 […]

June 12th, 2008

Another 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 […]

May 15th, 2008

On 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 […]

April 21st, 2008

Famously 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 […]