High Life Decoded: Your Essential Guide to Eating Oysters

Oysters are strange things to love. The briny little bivalves are housed inside of hard shells that diners tip back into their mouths, sending the still very-alive little fellows down the gullet, sans chewing. To novices and non-devotees, the whole practice seems bizarre and even repulsive. And yet the mollusks attract a cult following—these days, it's almost an anomaly when a hot new restaurant doesn't have a raw bar, and $1 oysters are the new 25-cent wings at many bars around the country. Whether you’re a newb or a seasoned veteran, there are a few facts that everyone should know about the almighty oyster. The experience of ordering and eating the things can be a bit intimidating—and, in rare cases, dangerous—if you don’t know what you’re doing, but this 10-step primer will give you the tools to navigate the raw bar like a pro. Click through the slide show to have all your burning oysters questions answered by two shellfish pros.    

The Experts

Sandy Ingber (left) started at Grand Central Oyster Bar in 1990 as the fish buyer, expediter, and purchasing agent. He became the chef in 1996 and has remained in the role ever since. Todd Mitgang (right) is the chef-owner of Crave Fishbar on the Upper East Side and South Edison in Montauk. He has oysters delivered regularly to his doorstep at his home in Long Island.

Sandy Ingber: “The thought in the past was that only during the “r” months [i.e., months that include the letter r, such as September and October], you would eat oysters. But with the amount of oyster farming that’s been done in America and air freight refrigeration, there are so many oysters available now. I have 30 different oysters in the summer alone on my menu. “The saying began because oysters spawn during the warm weather. They don’t all spawn at the same time, however, so there are plenty varieties available while others are not. You would not want to eat spawning oysters, which could have big fat bellies and be very, very creamy, or overly dry. Spawning oysters are not harmful to your health—they are just not palatable. Basically you want a beautiful crisp, solid-looking oysters that are full of juice. Not one with a big, fat, creamy belly.” Todd Mitgang: “It used to be only eat oysters in months that had the letter r in them. Back then you would eat oysters in colder months, when waters were colder. It had to do with some bacterias that could harm the oysters. Now, with the way [oyster farmers] are monitoring and sampling the waters, they are able to keep on top of viruses even in warmer months. If there are harmful bacteria in the water, either harvesters are able to treat them and prevent the oysters from being damaged, or they are aware of it and they won’t be sold to the open market. The waters will then be treated and cleaned up before a new batch of oysters are harvested. “When people say anything about seasons, I think it has more to do with colder waters—just like the freezer kills bacteria. It has more to do with disease than anything else.”

Sandy Ingber: “Farm oysters grow in a lab until they get to be a certain size and then they are put into bags. There are holes in the bags that are smaller than the size of the actual oyster, and they will continue to grow in these different sized bags until they reach market size—usually two to three years. “A wild oyster starts naturally in its habitat, and once it reaches a certain size, it attaches itself to a rock and never moves again its entire life. The important difference between a farmed and a wild oyster is that a wild one can grow on its own becoming long and skinny, while a farmed oyster undergoes what they call ‘manicuring.’ Most odd-shaped oysters are wild. “Farm-raised oysters are turned during the growing process so that the only growth the oyster has is on its outside lip. Farmers can turn oyster once a week, monthly, or even daily, with every farm doing it differently. Farms that turn oyster daily are more expensive. Manicuring knocks off all new growth, creating an oyster that becomes more rounded and more deep-cupped. This yields a more beautiful oyster, but you won’t taste the difference. Taste comes from the water, but eye appeal is a very important. A lot of an oyster’s price is determined by its aesthetic appeal.” Todd Mitgang: “Farming seems to have more to do with making sure that oysters are available for market than anything else. The fact that someone can look out for controls and make sure that the shells are appropriate before being shipped to market, I don’t want to say that it is a good thing, but I like both. If someone working on a farm is going to bring an oyster to market they are going to make sure that the oyster is sized appropriately and that the meat on the inside is full in its shell. It is going to be hard and not brittle. Brittle shell are both tough for the shucker as well as bad for the oyster, since you’re breaking the shell all over the delicate meat. [Oyster farmers] are looking for all of those controls that are going to make sure that what they sell in market is the best of that kind of oyster.”  

Sandy Ingber: “There are different grades of wild oysters. Standards are usually the least expensive, and they are usually elongated and the meat is skinny inside. The quality is usually not as good. The Selects are more beautiful, cupped oysters, as are the Premiums. When it comes from a farmer, if he has oysters that are not as aesthetically beautiful as other oysters, he’s not going to be able to get as much money for those, but flavor is not involved."

Sandy Ingber: “East coast oysters are all fairly different in flavor. [The flavor] changes from harbor to harbor and is decided by the food in the water that the oysters filter through themselves. They are eating whatever food and minerals are in the water. That’s basically how their flavor profile is determined. [East Coast oysters] are all pretty distinctively different in flavor. “On the West Coast, oysters are distinctively the same, which is one of the reasons that I don’t load up my menu with tons of West Coast varieties. Their flavor profiles tend to be very similar, with most of them being sweeter and only some with a little brininess.” Todd Mitgang: “Personally, I love East Coast oysters, but I am behind them for the right reasons. If I am working with oysters out of Oyster Bay, they are literally walked directly to my door with no carbon footprint at all. So that’s pretty cool. But I love both. The oysters that come out of Hood Canal are delicious. They are kind of clean and a little creamier, whereas I find the East Coast oysters—if you’re going to stereotype—to be a little more briny.”

Sandy Ingber: “At Grand Central Oyster bar we don’t sell any oysters from below the Mason Dixon line (basically Virginia), and nothing from the Gulf of Mexico because of the water temperatures. There is a virus called vibrio that oysters can get in warm water, and they have a much higher chance of getting that virus [further south], so we choose not to sell any of those oysters.”

Sandy Ingber: “On the West Coast, depending on how they farm the oysters, age is dependent a lot on the food and the tides. If oysters are growing in faster moving waters where there is more of a rush of food, then they might grow a lot faster. Some of the oysters from [that region] could be closer to two years in age. If an oyster grows too fast it becomes more brittle, so two and a half to three years from either the East or West Coast is generally preferable for a nice hard shell.”

Sandy Ingber: “The USDA has a very strict shellfish certification program that says all oysters that are consumed or sold for retail or wholesale purposes in the U.S. must have tags on their boxes stating that they were raised in certified waters. By law, any store [like a fishmonger or supermarket] selling oysters must keep the certification tags with the box until it is completely sold. They are then required to keep the tags for at least three months after that, so that if there are any problems the shellfish can be traced. “If you go into a fish store as a consumer buying oysters, I suggest asking them if you can see the shellfish tag. This tag will tell you from where and when the oysters were dug, as well as when they were taken to be sold. This way you know that the oysters are from certified waters. If they don’t show you the tag, don’t buy the oysters.”

Todd Mitgang: “A place like Maison Premiere [in Williamsburg] is kind of the best of what is going on right now. I think what they are doing is awesome. Happy hours with dollar oysters are fun. We run a happy hour like that in Montauk, and when we open the raw bar at Crave, we plan to do something like it too. What’s great about the price is that it encourages people to eat oysters, and because you want to be eating an oyster as close to its harvest date as you possibly can, it keeps stock moving along. So if a restaurant is carrying X amount of oysters and/or varieties and they are running a special or happy hour, it is helping the restaurant cycle through their oysters. If you are running a raw bar you want it to be as busy as it can be. With all seafood—specifically shellfish—you want to be cycling through shellfish as quickly as you can.”

Todd Mitgang: “Start with a smaller oyster, there are even some referred to as ‘beginner oysters.’ I would rather eat a smaller oyster than a much larger creamier one, because I think that a much larger oyster would be more intimidating to someone who has never eaten one before. “I also encourage people to use condiments. I love oysters by themselves, and if we bring in a bag of something that I have never tasted before, we shuck them and eat them by themselves to really understand their flavor profile. But for someone who has never eaten an oyster (and even someone like me), I still love mixing it up and eating oysters different ways. If you love hot sauce or citrus, or a place is doing a cool cocktail sauce, use it and find a way to get the oyster down. It’s almost like coffee—maybe you start with lots of sugar and milk and then before you know it’s less of each, and then soon your coffee is black. Oysters can kind of be the same way. If someone is looking at getting into eating oysters because they think it’s fun, or social, or they’re interested but they are intimidated, condiments can really help. Maybe start heavy and then slowly back off from the toppings a little bit at a time. Even with use of a condiment you are going to taste the oyster. The other flavors will be on the front end, but there will never be a way to fully mask the flavor of the oyster itself.”

Todd Mitgang: “It’s not about strength. If I’m teaching someone and I see that they are putting their might into it, odds are they are going to put the oyster knife through their hand. Find the opening at the tip of the oyster and get the knife in there firmly, then it is just a pop of the wrist. It’s easier than you think it is.”