New Jersey oysters may again grace the table

The Bergen Record, Wednesday, August 4, 2004
By PATRICIA MACK, Food Editor

Go ahead, savor them

It's never love at first sight, not with an oyster.

They are slick, slimy, and weird.

Why, one might ask, would a person want to eat such a thing?

The answer is simple. The taste of a prime oyster is superb.

The nuances of flavor can be elemental and subtle. And depending on the variety of oyster, the texture and the salinity can vary.

Hundreds of varieties can be found in the world's estuaries and backwaters, each tasting slightly different - from briny and metallic to mild and buttery.

"What you taste is not so much the oyster as it is the water it's been in," says Jim Filip, of Doris & Ed's, the award-winning seafood restaurant that overlooks Sandy Hook Bay. "When you eat an oyster, what you are tasting is the essence of somewhere."

America, with its expansive bodies of water, varying temperatures and fertile climates, yields a dizzying array of oysters with distinctively bold and luxuriant flavors.
"The variations come through in the liquid," said Filip, whose Highland's restaurant may serve as many as 300 to 400 oysters a night.

Filip is a lover of oysters, and something of an expert on how to eat them - which first and foremost is slowly, savoring every bite, slurping down the liquid, missing not a single drop.

Focus on your taste buds, he recommends, just as you do when you drink fine wine.

Filip recommends eating oysters straight, without the customary sauces such as vinegary mignonette, red cocktail sauce spiked with horseradish, or even lemon.

"All those things change the taste," he said. "You don't want to taste lemon, or vinegar, or horseradish, you want to taste the oyster. Don't let anything interfere."

America's desire for oysters is growing rapidly, as the number of available oyster varieties increases.

"We must serve 200 different types of oysters a year," said chef Michael Poirier of McCormick and Schmick's at Riverside Square in Hackensack. "They are coming in from all over, and each night we have as many as eight on the menu."

Oysters from American waters are cultivated rather than wild, to ensure consistency and safety. They are certified as being grown in pristine waters.

Unless a diner has a strong preference for one type of oyster, Filip suggests ordering about half a dozen of various varieties to compare their tastes and qualities - some from the East Coast, and some from the West Coast.

At a recent guided tasting, Filip discussed the relative merits of Flowers oysters from Connecticut; Glidden from Maine; Malpeque from Prince Edward Island; Martha's Vineyard oysters from Massachusetts - all grown in Atlantic waters, alongside Pacific Coast Belon and Kumomoto from Washington State.

Flowers were smooth and elegant. Glidden were a bit briny by comparison. Malpeque was sweeter than the others, and the Martha's Vineyard oysters were very salty, like taking a big, delicious bite of the sea.

The most markedly different-tasting oyster was the Belon, originally from the Normandy coast of France. It has a distinct and pronounced coppery taste - almost like putting a penny in your mouth.

The Kumomoto, by comparison - which is one of the most popular oysters served at Doris & Ed's - was clean, simple, and fleshier than the others.

Filip served samples of white wines to accompany the oysters. Finding just the right one to pair with just the right oyster adds to the enjoyment of eating oysters. Traditionally, a chilled champagne is served with oysters, and the "J" sparkling wine, a champagne-like wine from California that Filip poured, did work well. But so did the Clos de la Senaigerie, Luc et Jerome Choblet, 2002.

Muscadet Sur Lie from France was rich and lush, perfect for the rather spare taste of the Kumomoto.

Cakebread Cellars Sauvignon Blanc 2003, from California, was fresh and bright, making it a nice match for the Flowers, while Patz & Hall Chardonnay Woolsey Road 2002, also from California, had deep, oaky overtones that came close to masking some of the oyster's more delicate flavors but worked nicely with the Martha's Vineyard.

The surprise was the chilled Hakutsuru Junmai Dai Ginjo Sake, a soft and delicate spirit from Japan, which seemed perfect for every one of the mollusks.

Oysters taste of place.

They pick up the essence of their habitat, which is why they are usually named after where they are harvested. Olympia, Apalachicola, Chincoteague, Malpeque, Pemaquid, Cotuit, and Wellfleet are familiar names on seafood restaurant menus. And soon, maybe one more - a prodigal son, of sorts - the Raritan Chingora from New Jersey's Hudson-Raritan Estuary.

Its reappearance is due to an oyster restoration project spearheaded by the New York/New Jersey Baykeeper and the American Littoral Society working together to reclaim the coastal waters. The species is being farmed experimentally in several areas in the estuary with the hope that this proving ground will morph into a commercially viable industry. Currently the oysters are not harvested and cannot be sold to restaurants or markets, but if things go the way Baykeeper Andrew Willner hopes, New Jersey oysters might become available to the public as soon as five years from now.

If that happens, it will be a major comeback for a species that once thrived in estuary waters but was virtually exterminated by a toxic mix of pollution, over-harvesting, and disease. Although the program is still relatively new, Willner is optimistic about its ultimate success.

"We are seeing the oysters thrive," he said. "And they won't thrive in anything less than the very cleanest of waters."

When the Dutch colonists arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York), they were so impressed by the abundance of oysters in the harbor that they named the island we now call Liberty Island Great Oyster Island. The oyster harvest from the Hudson-Raritan Estuary - which ranges down to coastal towns such as Keyport, Perth Amboy, Red Bank, and the south shore of Staten Island - was a major industry. In Manhattan, New Jersey oysters were sold by the name of Amboys, Shrewsburies, and Navesink Goldens.

Although the region's oysters hold delicious possibilities, the major reason their restoration is important to Baykeeper programs is their amazing ability to filter and cleanse water. An adult oyster pumps as much as 50 gallons of water a day, improving water quality as it feeds. Oysters have also been called nature's bioengineers, because as they accumulate into reefs, they create habitat for crabs and more than 30 species of fish.

The Baykeeper, which is an environmental advocacy program, has a working partnership for this project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Marine Academy of Science and Technology's facilities at the NOAA's lab on Sandy Hook. The restoration methods in this pilot project are very basic, said Willner. The process involves putting oyster shells on the bottom of the estuary during the late summer, when oysters spawn. Like barnacles, oysters need a hard surface to grow on, and oysters grow best piggybacked on other oysters.

As succeeding generations grow on the older oyster shells, a reef is created. Currently a cadre of "oyster gardeners" takes care of the state's fledgling oyster reefs. During the summer months, volunteers are given two thousand young oysters to raise until the following summer. During this time, they monitor and care for the oysters, providing useful data for future restoration projects. At the end of the summer, the oysters are planted on restored reefs to help native populations. In 2003 to this point in the summer of 2004, nearly 400 volunteers and students have grown more than 150,000 oysters for restoration. The program has been in operation for five years, and hundreds of thousands of oysters have been planted over that time.

Carole Grabowski, a homemaker, mother, and Girl Scout leader, undertook oyster gardening as a troop project.

The Keyport resident is the great-granddaughter of an oysterman who earned his living in the day when her hometown's water yielded vast quantities of the mollusks. Now, she and her daughter and her daughter's troop tend to and measure the reef they nurture at the Peterson Marina on Keyport's shore.

"There's something wondrous in what we're doing," Grabowski said. "Bringing back oysters to the waters here really matters. The girls in the troop have learned about oysters and the history of them in our community. And, for myself, and because of my heritage, my own personal hope is this - that I'll see my grandchildren swim off the beaches when the water is clean again."

For information about volunteering for the Oyster Gardening Program, contact the restoration project manager at (732) 291-0541.
- Patricia Mack