How to Order Great Oysters Every Time
See our 4-minute California Matters segment on oysters and ocean acidification here.
Oysters and wine are similar in many ways. Many of us love both, but have no idea how to order the two. With oysters, I often end up muddling through an overwhelming list of choices, hoping for the best, and then once they're brought to the table, I indiscriminately slurp them down. Job done.
But much like wine, being ever so slightly informed about oysters can mean a lifetime of discovery. Consider that there are over 150 varieties of oysters and even the ones from the same farms will never taste the same from day to day. Like wines, which are spoken in terms of terroir, oysters are spoken in terms of meroir (from the French word "mer" meaning the sea).
And while it's tempting for many of us to identify the variety we prefer and then sticking to it, Mark Reynolds of The Jolly Oyster reminds us that it's good to explore outside of our comfort zones. Oysters, like anything else we eat fresh, will taste different throughout the year. "People want to eat with the seasons and want that shift from time to time in flavor," he says. "It makes it more interesting. Just like in life."
To know what flavor profile you're looking for, start with the five types of oysters we eat. They range from the sweet, buttery Kumamoto oysters -- an easy introduction to eating the mollusk -- then Pacifics, which are also sweet but have a briny finish. Things start to get more mineral and coppery tasting with the Eastern and the belon (sometimes called European flats).
Olympia oysters, which Reynolds calls the "connoisseur's choice" are highly regarded, revered even, and deserve a special mention. The only oysters native to the West Coast were at one time plentiful, but by the 1920s, the stocks were nearly decimated from pollution. Puget Sound Restoration Fund recently helped restore its population and the oysters can now be found in restaurants in the Pacific Northwest once again. The silver dollar coin-sized bivalve is the tiniest of the five edible species, but pack a lot of flavor.
Just like how a pinot noir from the Willamette Valley tastes different from a pinot from Santa Rita Hills, Kumamotos from Tomales Bay in Marin County will taste differently from the ones farmed in Baja, California. This goes back to the idea of meroir. Reynolds says, "The variety people talk about are a reflection of micro location of where the ocean grows." The body of water where stocks are raised affects the flavor, texture, and meat content of oysters. The salinity of the water will vary from farm to farm. And oysters are what they eat: the kind of algae in the waters affects the taste, texture, and size.
This is where things could get overwhelming again, when you consider how many oyster producers on the East coast alone: East Coast Shellfish Growers Association sites that there are over 1000 shellfish farmers from Maine to Florida. However, oysters are highly regulated and currently, outside of the U.S., only oysters from Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and Mexico ever make it to your seafood platter.
Reynolds' solution? He recommends speaking to the people selling you the oyster. They can tell you what's good that day.
