Oysters!

My GF and I love them. We go to the local Shaw’s quite a bit and take advantage of the 1/2 price oysters from 3-6. Have tried a bunch of varieties- and since I have a bad memory- I started taking notes on the ones we like and the ones we don’t really care for. Keep it on my Iphone- and would appear we have an east coast bias on the ones we like. Love that Shaw’s has different varieties to try- and are always cold and fresh! Just use a squeeze of lemon and maybe the nice semi frozen mignonette they serve with them. No cocktail sauce!! What are you faves??

Our go to’s are Island Creek and Wellfleet(they seem to have these the most also).

We wash them down with a Grey Goose Martini up, very very cold with a blue cheese olive.

The list of varieties we have tried-

Our favorites
Island Creek, Bluepoint, Kumamoto, Little Island, South Bay Blondes, Fox Island, Raspberry Point, Pemaquid, Quonset Point, Northern Cross, Otter Cove, Caraquet, Conway Royal, Misty Point, Summerside, East Beach, Beausoleil, Eagle Rock, Sunken Meadow, Rocky Nook, Marthas Vineyard, Naked Cowboy, Wellfleet, Fanny Bay, Peters Point, Malpeque, Unami, Gigimoto, Chatham

Just OK
First Light, East Beach, Hamma Hamma, Sister Point, Marion Point

One’s we didn’t care for(the notes are kinda funny on these- my GF has some very funny descriptors- they would be NSFW!!)
Penn Cove, Kusshi, Pickering Pass, Imperial Eagle, Treasure Island

Does the ‘producer’ not come into it? It certainly seems to in France.

It very well might- but the producer is not given- just the variety.

Really, its common in Europe. Maybe they work as co-ops in the US?

Kumamoto. End of story.

I like these also- but end of story…I think not. I actually prefer the Gigimoto. But both are excellent!

Highly recommended reading: Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur’s Guide to Oyster Eating in North America.

Shigoku are pretty damn good also…

We had some pickle points recently and they were pretty good…very intense.

I’ll always be a Belon and Claires man, but I’ll enjoy pretty much all of them

Rocky Mountain Oysters. End of story.

Well, that’s a ballsy comment.

Only had the Belons once and they were quite good. Can you even get them in the states?

Definitely Belon for me.

I love raw oysters BUT, having worked for years ten feet from the Oysters Rockafeller station at Antoine’s in NOLA, I STILL wake up in the middle of the night pissed off because I smelled them in a dream and then couldn’t have any…


They harvest a couple off the Maine coast (pretty rare), but they aren’t Belon unless they are from the Belon river estuary (although I think other flat oysters are sold as Belon even in France now)

I always liked Appalachicolas (below), but haven’t had one in several years. In undergrad days we would drive an hour west to Cedar Key, where you could easily harvest a few bushels of your own. I don’t think Cedar Keys are well-known outside Florida, and apparently they are not doing well at all these days.

In high school I had a part-time job at Red Lobster, and one of my duties was shucking oysters. We would have contests… my best was in the neighborhood of 5 full sheet pans in an hour.

Noting like oysters shucked hours in advance! newhere

On busy nights the pans would be hauled off and plated as fast as we filled them…

That’s a bit shy of the record: 38 oysters shucked in one minute!