Fillet

Oyster
Orgy

Rebecca Vesely

For traditionalists, September marks the first month in quite some time when one can indulge in oysters on the half shell. But for the heretics among us who have been feasting on the little buggers practically non-stop all year, September is just another month of raw, delicious fun.

One drizzly day last March, while visiting my family in Seattle, I persuaded my mother to meet me for lunch at The Brooklyn - hands down the best place to get oysters and other seafood delights in the Emerald City. (The persuasion part took no more than uttering the magic phrase, "crab cakes.") The Brooklyn, located right across from the future site of the Seattle Symphony, and a stone's throw from the Seattle Art Institute, is itself an institution. The renovated brick building is one of the last remaining from the frontier days, and briefly, during its wilder times, housed a brothel.

Today, the Brooklyn remains a cornucopia, but of other delights. Enter, and on your right you'll see a gleaming brass bar, and display case after display case of magnificent oysters, layed out in a mouth-watering fashion on crushed ice. In the back of the restaurant are wide, dark booths for private consumption of alder planked red king salmon, wild pacific halibut, salmon cakes, and pacific oyster stew. The staff is no nonsense in smart black suits and bow ties, and that seriousness extends to the meticulous selection of oysters.

Chaz Johnson is the chief shucker for The Brooklyn, and he knows a good oyster from a lemon (that is, a bad one). "The oyster should not be dry, or have a yellow tinge," he told me. And, he assured, oysters can indeed be eaten raw year-round, as long as you know where to find them. The leanest part of the year in the way of oysters here is January and February. During those hard months, The Brooklyn imports its oysters overnight, alive, on packed ice, from far-flung locales like New Zealand and Chile, which offer more salty and smaller oysters than those found locally. The die-hards gobble them up just the same.

Seated happily in a dimly lit booth along with the rest of the civilized Seattle downtown lunch crowd (no grunge rockers here), I ordered the Baker's Dozen - a sampling of thirteen oysters from thirteen growers. This menu item is for the true oyster connoisseur, or for those of us hoping to become one.

Presented in a clockwise circle, the Baker's Dozen comes with a description of each oyster's taste (as in "sweet with a strong briny after-taste") and growing method (beach, lantern net, or suspended tray). Contrary to popular belief, oysters are much like fine wine. They are not to be sucked down like some tawdry Jell-O shot in a sports bar.

During my visit in March, the oysters were all local - from places with picturesque names like Discovery Bay, Eld Inlet, the San Juan Islands, Hood Canal, and Hama Hama River. There was a lone California representative, the Kumamoto from Humboldt Bay, plus the Pearl Point from Netarts Bay, Oregon, and the salty Imperial Eagle from Vancouver Island.

The oysters were served with fresh lemon, and the beverage of choice: a Pyramid Hefeweizen from the beloved Hart Brewing Company of Seattle. And all oysters were as they should be: soft, watery, plump, healthy. Tastes ranged from briny to buttery to salty to sweet to coppery to - dare I say - fruity. But the best of the thirteen was a Penn Cove Select, from the North Puget Sound area called Sammish Bay. Firm, not too small but not too large, and decidedly briny.

Humans have been eating oysters ever since they learned to pry open the shells. It's said that the Romans so depleted the British Isles oyster beds in a literal oyster orgy that it took nearly a century for the precious shellfish to recover. Today, fears about eating oysters raw are not unfounded. These precious shellfish filter in all that is good about the sea, which gives them such a pure and salty flavor. But they also filter in the bad stuff. Oysters in warm-water regions like the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean, sadly, should be avoided. (Although I confess I ate raw oysters from the Med six years ago because my neighbor cultivated them himself in what he convinced me were purified oyster beds. I wish him no harm.) Bacteria grows more rapidly in these warm environments, diseasing the delicate shellfish. Oysters are a harbinger to our natural environment - when an oyster is no good, you can bet that our other friends in the sea aren't fairing so well either.

So for those traditionalists who believe raw oysters should only be eaten in the months that end in "r," welcome to the party. Come November, The Brooklyn will host its annual oyster festival, celebrating the best oysters, wines, and microbrews in the Pacific Northwest.

And the public is already stepping up its demand. After a Labor Day weekend spent kayaking in Northern California's Tomales Bay, an area renowned for its fantastic oysters, we made a pit-stop at the Tomales Bay Oyster Company. Alas, all they had left were the extra-smalls. I passed. I'm saving myself for The Brooklyn.

Rebecca Vesely is the Washington Bureau Chief for Wired News.