Return to Mike Sula's cover story, "The Oyster Whisperer"

AS IN MOST aspects of life, I find that there are two kinds of shuckers. There are the ones who take their time and put out a nice-looking oyster, no matter how busy they are and take pride in the fact that it looks and tastes the way it should. These shuckers examine each oyster before it is opened, figure out the best possible way to open them, then do so quickly and carefully in order to preserve its dignity. They understand that presentation is as important (if not more important) than anything when serving an oyster on the half shell. A perfectly shucked and presented oyster is certainly a rare thing indeed.¹ When someone who knows oysters is given a plate, shucked and presented perfectly on a bed of ice, it can be a very surreal, almost dreamlike experience. I find Oyster-Shucking to be a very tranquil, soothing experience. To me, it’s therapeutic. I don’t care how busy it is- it’s just me and the oysters in our strange symbiotic lifestyle as the tickets come rolling in. Our little “Dance of Death,” if you will. The Professional Oyster Shucker loves oysters and eats them whenever given the opportunity. The Professional Shucker knows as much as possible about the oysters they serve, not only to better themself, but to better educate the consumer as well as people they work with. They understand that the more people who understand and appreciate oysters, the more that they will have the privilege of shucking. They understand that if they shuck well, there will always be a job for them, almost anywhere in the World. I call this sort of person a Type “A” Shucker. Hopefully it won’t come as a shock for anyone reading this to know that I modestly consider myself a Type “A” Shucker. Oysters are my Life, my Passion, my Hobby, my Obsession. I have been to literally hundreds of Oyster Farms from California up to Northern Vancouver and Alaska, from the Carolinas up to Baie de Chaleur in Northeastern New Brunswick. I learn as much as I can from the Growers as well as what I learn from the oysters themselves. I can look at an almost any unopened oyster and tell you with an uncanny accuracy exactly where it is from and maybe even the name of the person who planted and cared for it. I can put on a blindfold and tell you what type of oyster I’m holding, or take a sip of liquor and tell you the species. If there is ever a job opening for a “Forensic Oysterologist,” I’m definitely your man. To me, all of this comes naturally- I have no idea why- it just does. To me, I actually find it difficult to understand why everyone isn’t as interested in Oysters as I am- the first signs of delusional schizophrenia, I’m sure- but I’m OK with that.

Unfortunately, there are also the types who just don't give a damn and could care less how the oyster looks as long as the top shell is partially removed and it won’t slide off the plate as it goes out to the table. They will nearly cut an oyster in half while removing the upper shell, then scramble what's left in a feeble, halfhearted attempt to sever the bottom abductor muscle. Occasionally, they'll make a lame effort to flip the oyster over when it looks so lousy they know the Chef will send it back if it goes past him on the way to the Guest, but most of the time they just serve it because they simply don’t care. This type of shucker has never eaten an oyster in their miserable life and never will because they “just know” they won’t like them and have a strong disdain for people who do. And even though it’s this sort of Supply & Demand that allows them to continue to be employed in their current position, they’re too dumb to realize it. If you told this type of person that starting tomorrow they would be working a area of the Kitchen, they’d welcome the change to work a “real station,” and if they never saw an oyster again it wouldn’t be too soon. I refer to this waste of a human being as a Type “B” shucker. If nobody told them, they wouldn’t know oysters came from the water. Dumber than a box of rocks.

One time, in the Gulf, I overheard a new member of our Platoon as he made some lame crack about how he wasn’t up for this and “…I’m just here for the college money…” something like that. To make a long story short, none of us ever saw him again. I tend to have the same attitude towards shuckers that just don’t care. If you don’t want to give it your all, just stay home- none of us want you here. It’s not as if someone put a gun to your head and told you to open oysters.² It’s one of the hardest things you can do in the kitchen, the pay is among the lowest, and unless you love your job, you’ll never be any good at it. You can mess up a little on a rack of lamb or a Cæsar salad or undercook a piece of fish and get away with it, but an oyster is about as unforgiving as it gets.³

Part of my frustration with a Type “B” is that they know next to nothing about the animal and therefore can’t appreciate its inner beauty. Producing an oyster is a labor of love.⁴ It starts out as a seed no bigger than the head of a pin and over the course of two to ten years is carefully and gently molded into a mysterious and scrumptious morsel of the deep. From the moment the Grower drops the seed into the salty sea, it is vigilantly tended to and cared for until it gets carefully put into its box and sent away- just like a teenager leaving home for college. For an oyster that is farmed, it is not simply forgotten about until Harvest time, but checked on countless times- the clusters need to be coaxed apart every couple of weeks or you’ll end up with a useless mass of mangled shell. Certain predators (other than the guys like me) love oysters- starfish and drill snails especially, and if they aren’t constantly nurtured and protected, you can end up with a cage full of empty shells. Starfish are such a serious nuisance nowadays that entire beds of shellfish have been destroyed in a matter of days when not properly “managed,” which is a very nice and politically correct way for an Oyster Farmer to say “we kill the [starfish] by dipping the cage in a boiling acid bath that’s harmless to oysters but deadly to almost anything else.” The water can be a factor as well- too much (or not enough) rain and they’re not safe to eat. If the water temperature reaches a certain temperature, too bad but nobody wants those spawny oysters. And on and on and on. None of the growers I know do it for the money- most of them have real jobs to support their meager lifestyle- many of which live in trailers near their farm so they can be there on a moment’s notice with a shotgun if they think someone is poaching from their beds.⁵

So, after all that, the Shucker is the very last line of defense. If we can’t open it in such a manner that it preserves all of the Oyster’s integrity, then what the Hell are we doing here? I’ve seen Malpeques that I personally planted in the Ocean many years ago butchered at the last possible instant of their life… choking it’s last breath of life as some Type “B” shoemaker hack stabs it to death again and again because they’re in a hurry and can’t relax enough to simply cut the abductor muscle in one clean motion. I’m not big on hunting something that doesn’t hunt back, but I’ve been told that when a deer is shot, if it’s only wounded and runs wounded through the woods for miles and miles that the meat doesn’t taste as good as it should- something about lactic acid I believe. And that makes sense to me, not only as far as flavor goes, but there has to be a certain amount of respect involved as well. Any animal that spends its entire life being raised for the sole purpose of our gastronomical enjoyment should at least be given the honor of a quick and painless death at the very end, shouldn’t it? I can’t imagine some guy working for Tyson’s or Perdue that tortures the poor chickens to death with a cattle prod and razor blade- which is basically what we do to an oyster if we don’t take the time to open them right. I actually find when opening a difficult oyster that if you speak in gentle tones and rub the bottom shell a little that you can actually coax them to open just a little more easily. They really do understand that in this case they’re at the bottom of the food chain, and once they accept it, half the battle is over. Just like Vegas- The house always wins (but the oyster never does).

Several things to keep in mind: First and foremost, Ordering, Receiving & Storage. Living in the Midwest, hopefully most of us realize that oysters don’t come from the Great Lakes- they come from an Ocean and it takes a little bit of time to get here from there. Shipping is expensive- most East Coast shellfish is put on a truck and takes about two days to get into town and in our back door. West Coast shellfish, coming from a slightly lower salinity is generally shipped via plane since it’s risky to spend an extra day or two on the road.⁶ Either way, no matter where it’s coming from, once it gets to either the airport or the Freight Transfer Point⁷, that’s where you need to be extra careful. Part of the responsibility of the people selling and shipping the shellfish is for them to ensure the oyster stays cold at all times until it’s in your cooler. A really good Company will use a Temperature Indicator- it’s a little thingy just like the one that comes stuck in your Thanksgiving Turkey- if it comes in popped, that means the shellfish reached a certain temperature for more than a certain amount of time. Now, it probably seems simple- just use a ton of ice or gel packs or dry ice or whatever keeps coldest the longest, but unfortunately it’s not that simple- As cheap as ice may be to produce, it still costs money to ship it across the continent. A pound of ice costs the same to ship as a pound of oysters. Or a pound of styrofoam. Or a pound of cocaine. Or a pound of newspaper. Or a pound of cardboard box and Bubblewrap. Generally speaking, the cost associated on a truck is about forty-fifty cents per pound and about three or four times that if an airplane is involved. The guys selling the oysters aren’t stupid- they know exactly what it costs to get everything to you. But they operate on a slightly lower margin than in a restaurant. Typically, if they can get 18-22% after all is said and done, that would be considered normal. Most of the highly reputable companies charge more for their product- but not as much more as one would think. A dollar extra for a dozen oysters really isn’t that much- we’re talking less than a dime each, and we haven’t broached the topic of “acceptable mortality.”⁸ But if you want the product shipped properly (as well as safely), it costs money like anything else. Someone selling oysters that are less expensive are either selling you oysters from questionable sources, questionable growers, aren’t shipping it as well as they could or a combination of any of the above. The guys growing the oysters know what they’re worth, and if one guy sells his for a lot less, it usually indicates a problem. You have to compare apples to apples. Sometimes, you’ll get a separate invoice for the freight so it doesn’t seem as high. Some guys actually mail you a freight bill that takes two weeks to get to you so it’s almost forgotten about, hoping you’ll think they have the best prices. No matter how you look at it though, the cost of freight is always included in the cost of the goods. I only know of one Company on the West Coast that does it as well as they possibly can⁹ - they put the oysters on a real airplane¹⁰ and as soon as the plane lands, the boxes are picked up by a reliable courier or seafood company and kept as cold as possible. During the summer months, you can put as much ice in the box as you want, but if it sits on a tarmac in Atlanta for an hour, the oysters and clams will probably arrive partially cooked. Some of the cheaper companies use a local courier that won’t bring the product inside the door- I actually had a delivery guy from DHL with a delivery of fresh Alaskan king crab worth over four thousand dollars tell me that he didn’t “get paid enough” to bring it inside and put it in the cooler. One phone call and I never saw that guy again, or his Company for that matter. The moral of the story here is that you get what you pay for with just about everything- if someone ships for less, they’re usually a reason, and it’s almost never a good one. There is actually another slightly less-reliable company on the West Coast that feels the need to advertise their products as “Live!” on the price sheets. As if it’s a bonus if the oysters come in and they’re not dead (which is funny because these guys will do anything to save money on freight). And I also love their illegal handwritten tags that say the oyster was in the water the morning that you receive them even though it’s been out of the water in a dry storage warehouse for over a week.

Now, let’s assume that you have the oysters and they arrived nice and cold. What’s next? The best thing to do is to disturb them as little as possible. If they come in a mesh bag (most of them do), twist the bag nice and tight and put it in a drainable pan. Add some ice and you’re done. By twisting the bag, it will keep the shells from opening if the oysters wake up and wonder where they are. Some people actually ship their oysters with cute little rubber bands holding the shells together (like a crocodile muzzle). This may seem a little harsh, but whatever works. This is common practice on flat oysters since there isn’t a lot of liquor to begin with. Again, this probably costs more since someone has to get paid to put the rubber bands on by hand, but it’s well worth it. Anyway, in the door, into the cooler, nice and quick, plenty of ice. Some people feel the need to wash them as soon as they get them, but I’m not a big fan of this- not that I’m lazy or anything, but let me tell you why: When someone in a restaurant is cleaning an oyster, they usually have more than one thing going on if their Chefs have any sort of time management skills- it’s part of what we call “multi-tasking.” So what usually happens is that the person cleaning them will dump them into a sink, cover them with water, and walk away while they do something else. When they get around to it and finally come back, they drain off the dirty water, thinking to themselves, “Wow, the water is really dirty and now the oysters are clean. I’m doing a great job. I should ask for a raise.” Occasionally they may scrub them with a brush at the same time. Here’s the problem: Your oysters have been out of the water for at least 24 hours and are having a hard time with that. They miss their home and are anxious to get back. At this point, they may still think they have a chance and we never want to take that away from them. Teasing them with tepid unsalted tap water doesn’t help- remember, these little guys filter a lot of water and are going through withdrawal. They will try to breathe, but realize almost immediately that there aren’t a lot of good nutrients in tap water and shut the shells very quickly. You may not see them open, but they do- just a little crack and it happens pretty fast. They also expel that water out just as quickly as they can through the hinge, purging any remaining nutrients they may still have from yesterday. So don’t soak them, ever.

Now that the oysters are in your cooler and ready to go, at some point you will probably want to put them on the Raw Bar. Now is the time to give them a quick rinse, preferably with a high-pressure hose in a drainable rack. The one on the Dish Machine is perfect, but you need to make sure the water is nice and cold. Give them a little scrub with a brush if you feel the need, but if you hose them off you probably won’t have to. Sometimes, I really wonder if all that is necessary, though- it’s not as if you’re eating the shell. Here’s the most important part: Oysters need to be kept on ice at all times. The best way to store an oyster is cup side down, just like it looks on the plate. If the cup side is down and the oyster is flat and level, when the oyster opens its shell, even just a millimeter, it won’t lose any of its wonderful liquor. Let’s face it- Oysters, as much as I love them, are not the most incredibly intelligent creatures on the planet- it’s not as if we’re dealing with dolphins here.¹¹ An oyster breathes by filtering water through its gills, just like a fish. But, unlike a fish, an oyster never propels itself through the water, so instead of water rushing through the gills, it needs to open and shut its top shell and force the seawater through itself. An average oyster on the West Coast can filter fifty gallons of water a day; a large East Coast oyster about sixty because of the difference in salinity. Once we take it out of the water, even though they can sense something is wrong, eventually they have to try to take a breath. And even if they open that top shell just for an instant before realizing it was a bad idea, any liquor that drizzles out is gone forever.¹² The liquor is what sustains the oyster and keeps it vitalized until it “Meets Mr. Mouth,” as I like to say. Ice will keep the oyster from opening its shell because of the simple reason that ice melts. Melting ice turns into water which is absorbed into the oyster through the hinge, providing it with what it needs. While the algae and minerals in seawater gives the oyster its different characteristics and subtle nuances, what an oyster needs to survive is in the water- mainly oxygen. Not at all unlike upscale purveyors who deliver live lobsters in seaweed or wet newspaper at the very least- it’s not to make them pretty- it’s the water inside keeping them alive. This will sound absolutely ludicrous, but if an oyster is stored properly buried in crushed ice without a lot of moving air, it can last out of the water for weeks at a time.¹³ So to sum it up, too much ice is never enough. They don’t need to be completely buried so that you can’t see them, but they do need to be in some sort of contact with the ice. If you have issues with the amount of crushed ice on hand, fix it fast because everything I said earlier about spending years growing the perfect oyster and then fucking it up at the last minute- leaving it at room temperature (which is what happens if it’s not on ice) for more than fifteen minutes is the beginning of the end. End of story. As the ice melts, you need to add more ice. Don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t enough ice and any crybaby crap about having to go crush more- the average cost of a plate of a dozen oysters is about twenty five bucks. Please don’t fuck it up by trying to save a few pennies on frozen water.

So, you have your oysters on the Raw Bar and they look and feel great. They’re nice and cold and ready to go. No matter which way you shuck- up or down, hinge or front, the key is to keep it clean. You wouldn’t serve a piece of fish with a big hole in it, or a slice of cake that’s broken in half, so why do it to an oyster? Another great thing about keeping oysters iced is that the ice will relax the abductor muscle slightly. Ever wonder why the clams on the bottom of the pile are the easiest to open? Same principle here. A warm oyster will not yield as easily. Sometimes, when an oyster is beach-finished (many West Coast varieties are), they remove them from the water, place them in bags and then leave them on the beach in what is called the intertidal zone. When the tide goes out, the oysters are forced to clamp their shells shut as tightly as possible because if they lose their liquor, they’re dead meat. This produces a very meaty abductor muscle (and you can charge more for this reason- nothing is free and it takes a lot of work to beach-finish an oyster). Generally speaking, when an oyster goes from cold to warm, the muscle holding the shells together will get noticeably tighter. And as we all know, the harder an oyster is to open, the harder it is to present it perfectly. The key to shucking is not to become fast before you can shuck cleanly. The best shuckers in the World are also some of the cleanest. I saw a guy in Canada open almost twenty oysters in a minute at a recent contest but he placed dead last because they looked like shit and the penalty points killed him.¹⁴ The person who won shucked about nine a minute but they looked great. As long as the oyster is nice and cold, you almost always have a shot at a perfect oyster. The shape of the shell will have something to do with it as well. The types of oysters that shuckers really love are deep-cupped without any elongated shells or changes in direction (like having to shuck up and then down). In the world of Oyster Farming, these oysters are called “Choice.” Oysters less than perfect are known as “Select,” then “Standard,” and finally “Commercial.” Not at all like the USDA grades beef- Prime, Choice, Select and No-roll. Given the choice (no pun intended), what grade would you like for dinner? A less-than-perfectly-shaped oyster may still be a possible perfect shuck, but it’s extremely unlikely and quite difficult, not to mention time-consuming. A Choice oyster will command twice the money from Oyster Fishermen but are becoming harder and harder to find in the Wild.

Read Mike Sula's cover story on Mark Mavrantonis

Jim Newberry

Quick sidebar here- at my first Canadian Shucking Tournament on Prince Edward Island in 2000, my friend John Bil¹⁵ and I were warming up. Everyone else was using Choice oysters because that’s what you get when you’re up on stage doing the real thing. But John pulls out these boxes of Commercials and Standards and plops them down between the two of us. I look at these things and ask him, “…Dude- what’s with the bananas? These things look like crap. Why don’t we get a few boxes of Choice and shuck some real oysters?” His reply was very simple. “..Yeah, Man… well… we sort of ran out of Choice and all that’s left are these, but they’re better than nothing...” So we shucked the bananas, the most difficult ones to shuck for the better part of the hour drinking cold Canadian ale and trying to tell each other why our respective Countries were better places to live. Well, after shucking those “bananas,” opening a Choice was a piece of cake- out of 140 contestants, John got first and I got second place, just 3½ seconds behind. I always recommend to someone who’s learning how to shuck to learn on a Choice, but practice on the most difficult oyster possible and try as hard as you can to be clean. Speed always comes with time, like anything else.

1. A perfect oyster will not have anything whatsoever remaining on either shell when it is opened and eaten- the mantle is completely unbroken and in its whole form. The abductor muscle is not only completely severed but also flush against the shell so that nothing remains when it is removed. Even for a professional shucker, this is extremely difficult. More on this soon.

2. I find that the best Shuckers are ones who actually want to open oysters, not the ones who applied to be a Dishwasher or Prep Cook- I used to view the Raw Bar station as somewhat of a beginner’s station, especially when I was working lead Sauté and thought I was a real bad-ass, but it’s not like that at all- anyone can get a pan hot and cook chicken or fish if they really want to, but open an oyster perfectly... now that’s another story altogether.

3. Actually, if you’ve ever met my fiancée you might tend to disagree.

4. Or, if you’re from Canada, it’s a “labour.” They’ll also tell you their oysters have a better “flavour,” since they don’t grow them too close to the “Harbour.” Whatever. I love our neighbors to the north, I really do- some of my best friends are Canadian, but it’s stuff like this that makes us a World Power- we don’t add extra vowels when we absolutely don’t need to. And what’s with reversing the r’s and e’s? Theatre, Centre… I don’t get it. I say tomato…yadda, yadda, yadda. Then again, marijuana is legal there, so they must be doing something right…

5. Yes, as insane as it sounds, this actually happens. As a Veteran of Special Forces, nobody appreciates good security as much as me. However, guys that spend this much time with rocks and mollusks occasionally get a loose screw and end up being unnecessarily paranoid.

6. Studies have been done that suggest certain species of West Coast shellfish including Crassostrea Gigas (the common West Coast oyster) react very poorly to repetitive mechanical vibrations, such as those caused from sitting in a truck for extended periods of time, especially one that is full and puts more pressure on the shocks than it should.

7. Hopefully this won’t come as a shock to you, but most cities, not just the big ones have rules and regulations about big-rig type eighteen wheelers making deliveries all over town and messing up traffic, especially in the downtown areas. Generally, the rule is no more than two axles. Now obviously the shellfish isn’t getting driven across the country in a pickup truck- it’s on a big rig. Every major metropolitan area has what is referred to as the “Transfer Point,” which is where the big truck is unloaded and transferred to either storage or another truck waiting to take the product to your restaurant. In Boston, it’s called “Araho.” Not all transfer points have refrigerated storage available, nor do they all have refrigerated trucks- refrigeration is expensive.

8. I love a good oxymoron, like Military Intelligence. You’d probably never hear an oyster use a phrase like “acceptable mortality.” That’s one thing a hostage and an oyster really hate to hear.

9. I must always give credit where credit is due, and the Marinelli Shellfish Company out of Seattle is as good as it gets- they’ve been in business for quite a long time and dominate the shellfish industry by doing everything the right way and not taking any shortcuts. There’s a lot to be said for integrity.

10. “Real” airplane? Vs. “fake” airplane? We’re talking United, FedEx or Delta vs. a smaller airline with smaller “puddle-jumping” aircraft that just aren’t set up to ship live shellfish. The bigger guys realize the plane will be heavier, thus using more fuel, and so on and so forth, making them not the least expensive alternative, but the bottom line is that they’re reliable- that’s why they’re one of the bigger guys. I can always tell if an airline is reliable by the amount of live human organs they ship. The three I mentioned along with UPS ship more than 97% of them, with most of the remainder being charted high speed aircraft.

11. This may sound crappy, but I wonder if anyone besides me has noticed that tuna out of the can just doesn’t taste the same since they stopped killing those dolphins in Hawaii…

12. You may occasionally hear from the village idiot that if you tap a gaping oyster and the shell shuts that it’s all right- this is absolutely and unequivocally untrue. If the shell actually closes, it’s the final effort made with the oyster’s last dying breath not to be consumed. The oyster is now dead and still on your Raw Bar- congratulations. If someone grabs it an hour (or a day or two) later and opens it without the smell causing them to vomit, it may actually go out to a Guest. Do yourself a favor and chuck the dead ones immediately and save yourself the trouble of finding a good lawyer. Oysters die- it’s a fact of life. If it bothers you that much, call the Company you bought them from and ask for a credit.

13. Many years ago, Malpeques from Prince Edward Island used to be stored in barns for weeks, sometimes months at a time when the ice as too thick to get through. The key here is to keep them cool and damp without a lot of moving air. And they were still good when they were opened. I don’t recommend trying this at home, but it worked then- trust me.

14. Plus, he was wasted. This guy was so drunk I’m surprised he didn’t stick the knife all the way through his hand a couple times, not that he would have noticed.

15. John Bil- the name is World-Renowned in the Shellfish Industry. If you were to google him, or shift and click here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=john+bil%2C+oysters&btnG=Search you’ll get thousands of web pages on the guy. Canadian Shucking Champion, ranked in the top three shuckers in the World and Sales Manager for the largest Shellfish Company in North America. There always seems to be two… a Master and an Apprentice- I am definitely not the Master, at least not while I’m in his company.

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