your father will love some grilled oysters on his special day

oysters are the happening thing in america right now. of course they’ve been a staple since ancient times but they seem to have historic waves of popularity in our times. author mark kurlansky in his book, the big oyster- history on the half shell, gives us a look at new york at the end of the 19th century and how important the local oysters (yes fresh out of the new york harbor) were to the growth and culture of the city. oysters were elegant fare for the wealthy but were also consumed by the poorest of the poor as a cheap and plentiful source of protein. every major city in the u.s. had lots of oyster bars (usually in cellars where ice could be more easily stored); oyster mania was in full swing!

americans have always loved their oysters but the oyster craze slowed because of dwindling supplies due to over fishing, disease, pollution and the great depression among other things.

here’s some great news; oyster mania is back in full swing! thanks to aquaculture, oysters are being farmed all over the world. raised in their natural environment, filter feeding on the surrounding natural plankton we now have a huge selection! in our brief 42 year history we’ve really seen some changes. in 1979 we offered an amazing selection- blue points from long island sound. that was it. nobody had much to offer back then because oyster farming was still pretty new in the u.s. soon we brought in some chesapeakes and later we offered pacific olympias (the only native oyster to our west coast). now there are hundreds of choices.

we choose a small selection of what we think are the finest available oysters from the east and west coasts. it’s interesting to have a huge selection but we feel that it’s better to have a couple types of fantastic oysters rather than risking the grey area of quality in offering a lot of variety. quality not quantity. our selections for this weekend are johns river from me, beau soleil & chebooktook from new brunswick.

celebrate with dear old dad with a plate full of fresh-shucked goodness (here’s mike’s mignonette recipe) or try this simple recipe for the grill- barbequed oysters

watch mike’s tutorial on grilling oysters

happy father’s day to all you dads out there!