
How To Enjoy Oysters
In a single slurp, oysters have moved up in the world to become one of Australia’s hero seafoods.
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William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway and Jim Morrison have written about them. Daniel Craig and his wife Rachel Weisz crisscross the Atlantic in pursuit of them. Judging by their abundance on menus across Australia, less-stellar types have also embraced them.
And it’s not our palates that have come of age; oysters are advancing too. Like French fine wine and wagyu beef, this coveted mollusc (don’t call it a fish) has entered the era of provenance. Oysters now have their own grading system, producers, regions and vocabulary—even their own terroir.
Aggregators like Appellation Oysters now buy and grade oysters in the same way négociants in France buy grapes from growers for premium maisons. In a sign of the times, oyster “sommeliers” are also popping up at finer establishments.
John Susman is the chief executive of Fishtales, and an oyster judge and educator. He says he has seen a surge in the category’s production and appreciation: “In less than a third of the generation, we have seen the oyster offering go from Kilpatrick or mornay, to selection by species, estuary, season and grower.”
Oysters are typically listed on menus by species, with tasting notes like “crisp, briny, vegetal”, or “brisk, creamy, melon”. As with real estate, though, oysters are all about location, location, location. Just as chardonnays in Burgundy differ with each microclimate, it pays to know your regions and famed producers.
“You can have five oysters next to each other, and they all taste extremely different. And when you start to scratch beneath the surface, you discover this one is from the very oceanic estuary, and this one is from a closed lagoon, and this one has influences that come from the lakeside storms of the Northern Rivers,” says Susman, passion oozing from every muscle in his face.
Wade into a serious oyster chat with any chef and Sydney rock oysters rise to the surface; the south coast of New South Wales alone has 38 different estuaries from which to source them. Pinnacle rock oyster country, however, is found in places like Wapengo, Merimbula, Pambula and Wagonga. On the Clyde River in Batemans Bay, Steve Feletti farms his oysters in relative hermitude, turning out sought-after varieties like Claire de Lune Bouton, Rusty Wire and Moonlight en Surface.
Colin Barker was head chef of Boathouse on Sydney’s Blackwattle Bay for 13 years, running an oyster menu of up to 18 varieties. “I am a bit of an oyster snob,” Baker admits over a plate of just-popped oysters at Coogee Pavilion. “So unless I’m seated in the vicinity of where they are being shucked, I won’t take on an oyster.”
Australian connoisseurs are aplenty, then. But according to celebrity chef and restaurateur Neil Perry, there is only one “oyster whisperer”: Gary Rodley from Tathra Oysters. “He’s one of the great oyster farmers,” says Perry, standing at the bar of Margaret, his award-winning restaurant in Double Bay. “Gary nurtures his oysters, and the result is one of the greatest tasting oysters in the world; rich, creamy, briny, umami, salty, yet sweet.”
For Perry and co, the best advice if you love oysters is to shuck your own. Professionals wriggle a strong, shortish knife into the shell from either the frill or the hinge, careful not to spill the oyster juice. The adductor muscle is carefully cut, without damaging the centre of the oyster’s abdomen. When dining out, it’s perfectly acceptable to ask what day the oysters came in, and for the freshest. If just shucked, the shells will be cool, with the “liquor” of the seawater on top and served on ice.
“The biggest travesty with oysters, that you see at a lot of markets, is that they pop the hinge and then run them straight under the tap,” says Perry. “This is done for commercial reasons, to get rid of any grit, but you are losing that oyster liquor, that salinity that is the story of the estuary it was raised in.”
If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to get your slurp on.
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