Loving and Learning

Eat enough oysters in enough restaurants and oyster bars and you will quickly catch on to who really cares about oysters. The greater the attention to detail, the better the oysters will be.

Did your oysters arrive within five minutes of shucking on a plate of cold crushed ice? Warm ice taken from the top of the ice bin and left too long on a plate is slushy, watery and opaque. It almost looks gray. Cold ice, on the other hand, stands up on the plate and radiates an unmistakable shine. The light catches in the many facets of ice like a plate of jewels. Your eye, in other words, is engaged.

If the oysters have been recently shucked, they will glisten and invite you in for closer inspection. Otherwise, they may appear to be a bit dull.

If you can see the oyster shucker at work, and if he or she is pulling the oysters out of a pile of ice, not plucking them from the top of an iced display, then you know you’re on the right track.

How’s the shucking? Any bits of shell? Was the adductor muscle cut so you can slide that little lovely right out of the shell?

Does your server know which oyster is which? If you don’t know what you are tasting--and you fall in love--how can you ask for more, please?

Then comes the issue of vinegar and cocktail sauce. When you consider all the trouble the oyster has gone through to breed and grow, and all the trouble it takes to bring that oyster to market as soon as it’s plucked from the water, why would anyone want to smother its flavor with vinegar or cocktail sauce?

The answer often involves the oyster. Eastern oysters out of southern waters, for example, can often be underpowered. If you want flavor, you have to add it.

Consultant Jon Rowley has found in his years of helping restaurants establish oyster programs that if you leave the vinegar and cocktail sauce off the serving plate, you sell more oysters by the end of the year. People who want the condiments will ask for them.

And he says the most devoted oyster fans--people (more often women than men) who descend on their favorite oyster bar and order by the dozen without looking at the price--eschew even a splash of lemon juice.