The Big Oyster
One thing that strikes me as a Brit coming to the US is how new everything is here. We recently took a trip to Boston, which is one of the oldest settlements in the country (in terms of Westerners, that is). We walked “The Freedom Trail”, a route that covers notable historical sites, including the grave of the first Western woman, Mary Chilton (strong name), to have stepped off the Mayflower and who died in 1679. We also took a trip to Harvard University, which was established in 1636, and thought to be the oldest university in the US. But when I was looking round, I couldn’t help thinking that the university in the city where I’m from (Oxford) predates this all by nearly 600 years (it was established in 1096). What I am saying (in a very roundabout way… we are getting to food soon, I promise) is that it is astonishing how quickly New York has changed from green plains occupied by around 15,000 Native American Lenape to the sprawling and global city it is today. I alluded to having given up on a tome on American history a couple of blog posts ago, the upshot of which is that I found an American history book much more suited to my interests: The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky, on which a lot of the facts in this post are based (and from which I stole the title for this post too). I’m fascinated by the social history of food and how it shapes so many lives that have come before us, as well as how food is experienced today. And it turns out that the city of New York has a long and intertwined relationship with oysters that some are trying to revive to this day.
From rags to riches
When Westerners first arrived in New York Harbour, oysters were plentiful and widespread; there were 220,000 acres of oyster reefs in the area in 1609. And they had been eaten by the indigenous population for thousands of years – hundreds of “middens” (piles of discarded oyster shells) have been found, one of which has been dated to 6,950BC. Settlers sent reports home of gigantic oysters, up to a foot long. I did a tour of Liberty Island in my first week here and found out there that Native Americans would collect oysters from its small shores hundreds of years ago, an image I still think about whenever I see the island. In fact, during the time that Manhattan was a Dutch colony (early 1600s), they called Liberty and Ellis Islands Great Oyster Island and Little Oyster Island respectively.
With English colonisation (from 1664) came rapid expansion of New York (and the surrounding boroughs, although they wouldn’t become technically a part of the city until 1898) and their oysters were world-famous (and cheap) being sold in carts for a few cents, and enjoyed by people from all walks of life. By 1880 the oyster beds of the New York area were producing 700 million oysters a year. Oysters feed by filtering water so are inevitably a reflection of the water they live in. You can imagine during the industrial expansion of New York the water was somewhat less than savoury and the quality of the oysters was increasingly affected; increasing pollution in the water not only restricted oyster growth but also made the remaining oysters potentially toxic to consume. In the early 1900s a combination of poor water quality and overharvesting ended the consumption of homegrown oysters in New York, and in 1927 the government officially closed the last New York oyster fishery. While they are still consumed in large numbers here, they come from fresher water further afield and – while still cheaper than the UK – are generally considered more of a luxury item by many (they followed a similar path in the UK, being originally harvested in huge numbers near London by people from all walks of life, and now largely by those who can better afford them).
Despite this, it’s not all doom and gloom for the New York oyster. In 1972 the government passed the Clean Water Act, which banned the dumping of waste and sewage into New York Harbour. And the water is now of a quality that they’re reintroducing the oyster; the Billion Oyster Project aims to have one billion oysters in the harbour by 2035 and to reclaim New York’s title as “the oyster capital of the world”. I do some volunteering with a farming project on Governors Island, which is where the project is based, and have seen the huge piles of shells that they recover from New York restaurants and that they use to “seed” new oysters - the babies find the surface of old shells ideal to grow on. (Interestingly we also use ground up shells that are too broken for that purpose to scatter on the farm chickens’ food as it’s a good source of calcium for their diet and helps with their digestion.) So far the Billion Oyster Project is responsible for 28 million oysters growing away in the harbour; each oyster is capable of filtering about 50 gallons of water a day so you can imagine how this is also improving the water around the city. Despite this, the quality of the water is still such that the oysters in the Harbor aren’t yet edible.
The world is my…
Of course, I couldn’t spend all this time reading up about oysters without sampling a few… Boston is a seafood lover’s paradise and the New England coast produces reputably amazing shellfish. I had an oyster from Saquish, in Cape Cod, simply served on the half shell and it was wonderful. Just as wine has terroir and will vary depending on the terrain where the grapes are grown, oysters have merroir; the saltiness and sweetness will differ depending on the water it has filtered and grown in (hence the cliché that they taste like the ocean). From the same restaurant (Row 34, which was great) I also had breaded oyster tacos, served with avocado and lime crema; the strong, saltiness of the oyster worked surprisingly well with the punch of the other ingredients… I love how Americans put everything in tacos. Back in the Big Apple I tried a fried oyster sandwich from Pier A Harbor House, like scampi but even better – see photo below (though I think they’re tastiest served raw). And finally, at the other end of the decadence spectrum, I had more raw oysters at the Michelin-starred River Café on the East River – see main photo; these were Shigoku oysters served with cucumber and champagne mignonette (a traditional condiment for oysters made with vinegar, pepper and chopped shallot). These were divine, though sadly I found out afterwards that they’re actually from Washington State, all the way on the other side of the country. Thanks to the work of the Billion Oyster Project, New York oysters may soon be edible... I hope I can sample a native New York oyster in my lifetime, and taste a small piece of its history.
