I used to work at this restaurant, The Black Pearl in New York, and there was this oyster shucker from New Hampshire who got fired on the spot. It was really hard to find a new shucker on short notice when they let him go, so they asked me if I knew anyone. I told them “I’m here” and they looked at me like, “Are you sure?” and I took it from there. Ever since then, I’ve become known as “Eddie Oysters.”
I like to be Eddie Oysters because it’s a privilege to be a part of the art that it takes to shuck an oyster. You can cook, you can fry, you can sauté, but can you shuck an oyster? In the restaurant business, it’s a unique skill that you have to master. Fortunately for me, I put a lot of passion into it, and now people know me around New York City, across the country in California, and even in Ireland.
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I used to shuck oysters at spots like Prime Meats and Grand Central Oyster Bar. These days, I’m busy selling oysters and scuba-diving for them in the Long Island Sound on the North Shore. I also run almost all of the New York City oyster festivals that are out there. It’s an amazing business.
To me, what defines a good oyster shucker is a couple of things: You’ve gotta know what you’re doing when you’re popping the oyster. Once you’ve shucked it, you should be able to open it and not hurt yourself. The oyster should look clean: there should be no shells in there, and before you give it to the customer, you need to smell it and ensure that you’re sending out a good oyster. The last piece—and the most important one—is that you must have a big smile on your face to let patrons know that you’re sending something good out into the world.
If you’ve got a bad oyster on your hands, you will know immediately. A lot of people slurp, but I recommend chewing it once, twice, three times—not only to get the taste of the oyster, like you would in a wine tasting, but to make sure that it’s not “off.” It’s the shucker’s responsibility to determine if the oyster is good to go. If the shucker can’t tell or anticipate that it is going off—which can happen between the time it takes for it to be shucked and sent off to the table—a bitterness will appear and you’ll be able to spit it out. And that’s why you should chew, not swallow.
There was one time when I was paying too much attention to my customer, not looking at what I was doing, and I went through the palm of my hand. I didn’t realize what had happened until the customer started screaming.
That same bitterness is a flavor off the back that’s the most disgusting thing that you could ever experience in your life. There’s no description that could explain how horrible it tastes.
Grand Central Oyster Bar, for example, usually goes through 5,000 oysters on an average day, easily. Since it’s inside Grand Central Station, there’s a lot of traffic coming in and out. I’ve noticed that when oyster shuckers are starting out, a common mistake is that they look at oysters as a piece of rock. As a result, they figure that they need to put a lot of force into it, which causes them to stab themselves. You will get hurt.
You don’t want to experience that, because it’s the nastiest thing (besides eating a bad oyster). I’d rather be stabbed with a regular knife than an oyster knife. There was one time at The Black Pearl when I was paying too much attention to my customer, not looking at what I was doing, and I went through the palm of my hand to the other side of it. I didn’t realize what had happened until the customer started screaming.
I have also witnessed some really bad cuts involving the shell itself. You don’t need to put too much force into it to pop it open. There was this guy that got stabbed the day before yesterday—who sliced his whole thumb pretty bad—and I asked him, “How the fuck did you manage to do that?” And he couldn’t even tell me. That’s how fast shucking can be. It’s pretty intense.
Whoever puts a lot of cocktail sauce or mignonette on theirs isn’t really eating an oyster—they’re eating sauce.
I’m from Puerto Rico, and when I was 17, I moved down to St. Croix to work on a Hess oil refinery, and we consumed all types of seafood. You think all of the seafood in the Caribbean is great until you move up north to New York City, or visit Maine, Canada, Rhode Island, wherever, and realize what is really good for you. At the time I thought I was eating the best oysters in the world.
If you’re eating oysters on the half shell, warm-water oysters—from places like the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast—are the worst, in my opinion. I feel like I’m chewing on bubblegum. But when you cook it, fry it, or bake it, it’s the most amazing oyster in the world. The colder the water, the better the oyster. A hard-shell, nice and meaty, mineral-flavored oyster is what I look for in the perfect one. Once you shuck it, you can tell how the quality is by how it looks. You can have a great oyster, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the skill of the shucker. If they’re bad at their job, it will look like they chewed the oyster and spit it back into the shell before serving it to you.
As Caribbeans, we put lemon on everything: our meat, our seafood, our salads. Lemon is always a good thing. It kills bacteria and is a smart thing to put on seafood, which can give you the harshest food poisoning out there. It’s also tasty with oysters. I put a drop of lemon and a drop of hot sauce on my oyster. I don’t want to overpower it. Whoever puts a lot of cocktail sauce or mignonette on theirs isn’t really eating an oyster—they’re eating sauce.
If you’re starting out, Beausoleils are really nice. They’re petite ones that aren’t very briny, super clean, and a great introduction. My favorite is actually from the South Pacific of New Zealand: the Coromandel. It’s got a very deep cup, very plump, very briny, and super clean. They’re very limited in distribution into places like the US, so any chance I get, I grab them and keep them for myself.
In the end, eating oysters is up to your personal palate. If you want to take a chance and go with a plump, medium-sized, 3-inch oyster, it can be very overwhelming for a beginner. I don’t recommend going for a briny or large oyster if you’re just starting out.
That rule of thumb about only eating oysters during the months that have R’s no longer works. With the refrigeration that we have today, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. At a place like Blue Island, you can sell cowboys all year round. The West Coast has more regulations—California, Seattle, British Columbia—because from May to September, their waters are warmer. The warmer the water, more bacteria. The more current, the less bacteria the water holds. East Coast waters don’t have that problem.
The fastest oyster shucker in the world is Patrick McMurray; he shucks 38 oysters in a minute. I shuck 44 in a minute. The only problem that I have is that I don’t have it on tape. But I’m after him.
