Oyster – Memphis Flyer

Oysters can be prepared and eaten many ways: There’s fried (think cornmeal-fried oysters with lemon-cayenne aïoli); smoked (smoked salmon-oyster tartare); baked (oysters Rockefeller and Bienville); as a soup (oyster and artichoke soup with basil pesto); and as stuffing (medallions of beef tenderloin stuffed with smoked oysters and oyster mushroom demi-glace).

If the preceding paragraph has got you craving oysters, mark your calendar for November 15th, when Jeffrey Dunham, chef/owner of The Grove Grill, will prepare oysters in all these ways for a special dinner featuring Kevin Voisin from Motivatit Seafoods, an eighth-generation family-owned Louisiana seafood company.

Motivatit’s Gold Band oysters — which Dunham serves at Grove Grill — are a high-pressure processed (HPP) oyster. The patented process shucks an oyster without opening the shell. This, however, is just a nice “side effect” of the solution to a problem the Voisins have been trying to solve for a while.

“We had been looking for a way to eliminate the dangerous bacteria in raw oysters for more than two decades,” says Voisin. “We’ve tried a lot of things, but most of them affected the oyster’s taste, texture, and shelf live adversely. Then we came across the high-pressure technology that was already used for other food products such as fruit juices.”

Motivatit’s HPP Gold Band oyster does away with everything that might come between you and your oyster by keeping the oyster well-supported and moist in its shell.

“The easiest way to explain this and to see it for yourself is by taking a 20-ounce water bottle and put a grape inside,” Voisin says. “If you squeeze as hard as you can, you’ll see that the grape won’t be harmed because the water protects it and takes the pressure from your hands — that’s how the high-pressure process works on oysters.”

According to Voisin, the new process makes opening the shell so easy that it can be done with a butter knife. And while Motivatit still employs a shucker, the position should really be called “shaker,” because the oyster occasionally needs a little extra help to be shaken out of the shell.

This fairly new process makes some oyster connoisseurs cringe. For them, the prying open of the shell, the quest for an intact piece of meat free of sand or shell particles, and the threat of getting sick from the bacteria make eating oysters difficult, frustrating, and dangerous. So when all goes well, the reward is even sweeter.

But Voisin doesn’t think oysters need be challenging to be enjoyed. “What it comes down to is taste, and our oysters have won numerous taste awards because you won’t find any grit that typically comes from shucking, especially on the raw oyster,” he says. “You don’t have to fear a chipped tooth from a tiny piece of shell that’s still stuck on the flesh or any of the harmful bacteria.”

In addition to Grove Grill, Gold Band oysters are served at Jarrett’s, Blue Fish, the Memphis Country Club, Joe’s Crab Shack, Silky Sullivan’s, and Jim’s Place Grille. The Fresh Market can special order Gold Band oysters; minimum count is one dozen. However, they have to be pre-ordered a week in advance and typically cost a little more than twice as much as regular oysters.

The Motivatit dinner is Wednesday, November 15th at 6:30 p.m. The cost for the six-course dinner, with wine pairing, is $65, plus tax and tip. Call Grove Grill to make reservations.

The Grove Grill, 4450 Poplar (818-9951)

siba@gmx.com

“Men have enjoyed eating oysters since they were not much more than monkeys.” — from M.F.K. Fisher’s 1941 book, Consider the Oyster

Although my parents are both natives of Louisiana and I’ve spent considerable time on the open waters of the Gulf Coast, I’m a latecomer to oyster eating. It wasn’t until I reached my early 30s when I learned to appreciate the dazzling display of a dozen live mollusks, served on a bed of ice at the legendary Casamento’s Restaurant in uptown New Orleans.

In Memphis, I discovered Anderton’s, where I ate baked oysters dressed with breadcrumbs, herbs, and Worcestershire sauce and finished in the Rockefeller or Bienville style. I slurped down raw oysters offered at a bargain price of $4 per half-dozen, and I even tried them stewed in half-and-half. Then the Midtown landmark closed, and I’ve been oysterless ever since.

If, like me, you’ve been hankering for an hour at the oyster bar, where shuckers patiently eye your plate, awaiting the nod for another dozen, you’ll be happy to know that there are plenty of local places where you can get your fix.

Blue Fish, in Cooper-Young, has a gleaming, tiled oyster bar where you can try all the traditional dishes or nouvelle variations, such as the oysters baked in a Memphis Mary mignonette sauce. Along with the Gulf Coast oysters harvested in Houma, Louisiana, executive chef Richard Grenamyer also offers varietals, including the Kumamotos from Puget Sound; the Maryland-harvested Rappahannock; and the ever-popular Northeastern Blue Points.

“We have suppliers everywhere in the world, so getting them isn’t the issue — the price is,” Grenamyer wryly notes, adding that Kumamotos are currently going for $100 per bushel of 120 oysters. He sells the pricier, more uncommon species à la carte, allowing diners to sample a variety of flavors without — pardon the pun — shelling out a ton of cash. His Gold Band Gulf Coast oysters also fetch top price, costing $14 per dozen on the half shell.

If you want that familiar Anderton’s taste, head east to either of the Half Shell’s locations, on Mendenhall or on Winchester. In business since 1973, the Half Shell has procured their Gulf Coast oysters from Amite, Louisiana, company Joey Oysters Inc. — the same outfit that supplied Anderton’s — for the last eight years.

“We go through 60 to 80 bushels a week. That’s more than 2 million oysters we’ve gotten from Joey,” says Half Shell executive chef Darrell Smith. “Mr. Anderton and I were the only two places in town to run that exact same oyster. If we got into a bind, we’d call each other.”

Justin Fox Burks

Smith has six shuckers per restaurant “who can really produce” raw oysters, which run $8.75 per dozen. He also offers weekly oyster specials, including a Rockefeller Nuevo, which features fried oysters topped with a Pernod cream sauce. On November 15th, Smith is rolling out a two-week long “Oyster Festival,” with raw, served on the half shell samples of Pacific oysters, including the Canadian Chef Creek oyster and the Washington State Maple Point and Windy Point varietals; and Atlantic oysters such as the Tatamagouche, from Nova Scotia; the Cockenoe, from Long Island Sound; and the Wellfleet, from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He’ll also be making an “oyster-laden menu” replete with oyster loafs, oyster stew, and oyster sauces during the festival. (Also see page 48 for information about an oyster dinner at Grove Grill.)

While some landlocked oyster lovers are skittish about the current crop of Gulf Coast mollusks, neither Smith or Grenamyer has seen much of a drop-off in quality since hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

“We have seen a little change in the last few months, because so many beds were ravaged by the storms and the harvest hasn’t had a chance to catch up,” says Smith, who maintains that size but not taste has been somewhat affected.

“Put one on a saltine, add a touch of hot sauce, and I’m ready to rock-and-roll,” he says.

“The Gulf hasn’t had a good year. Counts are down, and fishermen aren’t harvesting as many, but that’s cyclical,” says Grenamyer. “Because the oyster functions as a filter, you can take one out of horribly polluted water and put it in pristine water, and, within 30 days, it will clean itself out. It will be totally edible, which is what makes an oyster different from a fish or a shrimp. The ones we’ve had this year are as juicy and meaty tasting as ever.

“Yes,” Grenamyer admits, “people have gotten ill from eating raw oysters, but that’s because they’re eating dead, rotten oysters, not living ones.

“I’m a raw guy. I just like to slide ’em on down.”