PA
I like to think of it as a triumph of human cunning that we eat oysters at all, when they have surely developed an evolutionary survival strategy to make themselves look so disgusting. I have swallowed plump and buttery rock oysters by the dozen in Sydney, enjoyed trayfuls of the particularly succulent Whitstable variety and sent many members of the compact Galway breed swimming with gulps of Guinness. All are equally ugly, yet irresistible once they pass your lips.
Many oyster addicts will be feeding their delicious habit at the International Oyster Opening Championship in Galway this week. Armed with only a knife and a piece of cloth, the best shuckers from around the world will be trying not to lacerate themselves as they open 30 oysters each - neatly - in the shortest possible time. One year’s winner did it in just under three minutes.
Seductive city
But Galway is not the pinnacle of oyster eating for me. For the oyster sensation – it is more than just a taste – is so potent that it also throbs with meaning. It means breaching the faddishness of childhood, becoming adult or, to put it another way, discovering sex. Ugly but sexy, oysters are the Jean-Paul Sartre of the food world, which brings me to the point at the end of a long chain of association, namely that I like eating them in Paris more than anywhere else.
That still most seductive of cities finds perfect expression in the mysterious, salty, silky oyster. The French oyster season runs from roughly the beginning of October to March, and for most of this period great, tottering piles of oysters encrust the city. They are on sale from innumerable street-corner carts, in every second bar and brasserie, at open-air markets – those on rue Montorgueil and rue Mouffetard have excellent stands – and from celebrated oyster specialist restaurants such as Garnier, in the eighth arrondissment, and La Cagouille, in the 14th, not to mention from most hypermarchés.
Quality, not just price
Speaking of hypermarkets, Jean-Luc, an oyster vendor who had conveniently set up his cart a few metres from my hotel on a recent oyster-gorging visit of mine to Paris, told me he used to supply them. But, he said, “They don’t care much about quality, only price.” He seemed happy now selling his produce from trestles outside a café - whose customers, as is often the way, can order a plate of spanking fresh shucked oysters to be brought inside.
Where have you eaten the best oysters?
Indeed, Jean-Luc was so cheery I was about to include him as evidence against the idea that Parisians are, as oysters should be, permanently chilly. Throw a few French sentences their way, I have found, and the suave inhabitants of the city are no more impolite than Sydneysiders or New Yorkers.
But then I realised Jean-Luc could not be a Parisian. Paris oysters typically come from the three great French production areas of Arachon, Cancale and Marennes-Oléron. Jean-Luc brought his oysters up once a week from the latter region, he told me, opening his stall on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 8am. There were few customers about on this late January morning and he was happy to talk a fellow oyster enthusiast through his stock.
Inside information
Oysters are graded in France according to a system getting on in its complexity for the country’s wine classifications. The difference is that there is no oyster equivalent of plonk: all are good, when very fresh, but the first thing to know is that France cultivates two species of oyster.
The Pacific variety, also known as the huître creuse or simply creuse – referring to its concave inner shell – accounts for 90% of production and is available almost everywhere. The creuse is simpler tasting than the other variety, the huître plate or plate (meaning “flat”), which was the original French oyster. Decimated by disease and overharvesting, it is now rare but worth seeking out for its firm flesh and full taste with an odd, tangy kick. That complex, adult flavour makes it the oyster lover’s oyster, but whether the expense of Belons and Marennes – as they are also, frustratingly, known, after the rivers in which many are matured – is justified by their quality or simply comes from their rarity is finally for the eater to decide.
Deftly shucking another Marenne for me, Jean-Luc explained a further category - concerning the oysters’ maturation in the estuarine waters (“claires”) where they are placed before finally being taken to market. The difference concerns the density of the oysters on the riverbed and the amount of time they spend there. Pousses en claire are the most privileged, with plenty of nutrient-rich water to each oyster and around four months to enjoy it, followed by speciales de claires and fines de claires – this last being the everyman oyster most people eat. Jean-Luc sold fines at five to 10 euro a dozen, depending on their size.
Au naturel, of course
That price may be twice what you pay in regional France, but in Paris you have the advantage of finding oysters from all the regions (an advantage, that is, if you don’t find all the variety too confusing). Jean-Luc shucked me a speciale. “Look!” he said. “Double the size of a hypermarket oyster!” His hands had nicks all over them: not, he said, from the knife but from the unpredictable edges of the shells.
Even one euro an oyster is less than you pay in a restaurant, and I find buying them, shucked or unshucked, from an oyster stall far more satisfying. Ask for two dozen or more and you get a little, dripping wooden tray packed with ice to transport them home or to a park. Au naturel is the way almost all oysters are eaten in France, although you may get a sauce mignonette – a dressing of red wine vinegar and chopped shallots – if you order them in a bar. Rye bread spread with unsalted butter helps to clear the palate between each sublimely salty submersion.
Thanks, Jean-Luc! Your oysters tasted of everything they should, and of Paris, too.
Travel facts
Garnier, 111 rue St. Lazare; 33 1 43 87 50 4. Open until 11.30pm
La Cagouille: 10 place Constantin-Brancusi; 33 1 43 22 09 01
Where have you eaten the best oysters?
