Consider the Apalachicola Oyster

Just below the rough, wooden bar currently holding up my beer are four boat slips, one of which holds a 28-foot boat I could actually afford to buy. Technically. Provided I didn’t also need food and shelter for my family. Beyond the boat is the junction of river and bay, where the bay narrows back into a river channel which, based on my hour or so of observing, is used mainly by shrimping vessels headed somewhere further upstream. Downstream the reeds thicken and marsh proper begins and beyond that the water broadens out to form Apalachicola Bay with its endless shallows and oysterbeds.

The slightly dilapidated boat down on the docks below looks like a better and better deal with every passing beer. So far though the half dozen raw Apalachicola oysters I’ve downed have provided enough sustenance to prevent me from emptying my savings. I am not yet the new owner, but should the oyster fields run dry, who knows?

If there is a simultaneously gluttonous and yet clean, light food to match the oyster I have not found it. One part light sweetness, one part salty smoothness, oysters are a just about perfect food for those who’ve acquired the taste. Not cooked, though cooked, especially an oyster roast done over an open fire with some sheet metal and damp burlap, can be an amazing thing. But no, not cooked. Embrace gluttony and slurp them down raw. In front of me are half a dozen empty shells, calcified evidence of a flagrantly gluttonous afternoon.

Out across the water, just beyond where the reeds of the estuary give way to the shallow, oyster-laden expanses of the Apalachicola Bay, a blue-hulled, single-masted boat is anchored, two people lounge in the cockpit, shirtless, lazing in the sun, reminding me that I too ought to have a boat. Not a big boat. Certainly not a ship. Just something for coastal cruising that can still stand up to the occasional ocean crossing. A boat. My gaze drifts down to the docks in front of me, the for sale sign still threaded through the mainmast rigging of what really is a not all that bad looking boat… But first, more oysters.

If you know the name Apalachicola at all it’s likely because of its eponymous oysters. Very few things, let alone culinary things, are as attached to place as oysters. In fact, once you get beyond the Rockefeller, ordering “oysters” is akin to walking in a bar and ordering “a beer.” But unlike beer, oysters don’t have brands, they have places — Pemaquid, Wellfleet, Blue Point, Apalachicola.

Ask a marine biologist and they will point out that there are really only a handful of oyster species in the world and many of them, like those that produce pearls, aren’t part of our culinary repertoire. In fact, in the U.S. there are really only three species of oysters consumed — Pacific (Crassostrea gigas), Kumamoto (Crassostrea sikamea) and Eastern, sometimes called Atlantic or Gulf oysters (Crassostrea virginica). It’s the difference in place and environment — water temperature, sea floor conditions, available nutrients and so on — not species that produce the different sizes and shapes of oysters you see. That’s why, with a handful of exceptions, almost every variety of oyster you’ve ever seen in a restaurant is named after its point of origin and is not actually a separate species or even subspecies.

An oyster’s point of origin is not just the determining factor in how it tastes, it’s also the best place to eat one. Oysters are sometimes treated as a fine dining item, but I’ve always thought of them more of the street food of wharves and marinas, or, as in Paris, actual street food. Oysters are simple — there’s not even any cooking involved — eating them should be simple too.

My favorite way to eat oysters is at an open air raw bar, preferably on the docks somewhere and preferably within view of the oyster boats and the waters they ply. Oysters are best served on a tray with some crackers on the side, which are best politely handed back to your server or, if you’re doing it right, tossed in the water for the fish to consume. If you must put something on them, try a little of the local hot sauce (in Apalachicola that would be Ed’s Red).

My best oyster experience was in Pemaquid, Maine where I actually got to watch an oysterman tie up the boat, exchange a few hand gestures with the bartender and bring up two buckets of fresh oysters pulled straight out of the hold all while I sat sipping a beer, waiting on another dozen. In Wellfleet there were no boats in, but there was still plenty of salt air, rough pine tables and a good view of the oyster flats just beyond the harbor. In Paris I just stood there and slurped before walking on again.

If Apalachicola has such a setup it’s hidden well enough that I never found it.

Instead we settled for a raw bar/restaurant which I would never have entered under normal circumstances. The sort of purposefully tacky place designed to entice tourists with deliberate misspellings and references to parrotheads painted on the stairs. It was almost enough to send me retreating back to the car, but the sign promised views of the marsh, and, frankly, I’d already driven the wharf area once and this place was, as best I could tell, our only hope. As it turned out the covered upstairs deck had a lovely view of the marshes and the staff was friendly enough.

Half a dozen oysters later I’d changed my tune a bit on Apalachicola oysters. Apalachicola oysters have something of a lowly status among your oyster connoisseurs. Here the waters are warmer and the oysters therefore larger and somewhat more risky to eat than colder water varieties. Of course bigger is relative. In his book The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Mark Kurlansky describes how the once mighty oyster trade of New York used to bring in oysters the size of dinner plates. Quite frankly, though I love oysters, that sounds repulsive.

Oysters are good things, but dinner plate sized oysters would most definitely be too much of a good thing. And while I enjoyed my Apalachicola oysters I do still think there are better oysters out there — Beausoleils remain my personal favorite (and are one of the few varieties I know of not named after their place of origin — New Brunswick). That said, I regret waiting until my third trip to the area to sample the local bivalves. Only a fool would pass on the chance to eat an oyster plucked from waters you can watch while eating it and thankfully, I am no longer that fool.

Sadly I am also not yet the owner of a boat. Not the one down on the docks in front of me nor any other. But one day I will be. I don’t know where I’ll go exactly, don’t know what I’ll do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be some harbors where the oyster boats tie up in the evenings and where I might find a cold beer or two and some lovely, gluttonous, yet so light and clean, little oysters to make sure the beer doesn’t send everything cockeyed, to make sure the world stays nicely on keel.