The Oyster Bar

The American oyster bar belongs first to New York, a city built on a harbour and its estuaries, where the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, was for generations the cheapest and most plentiful food within reach of the whole population. Arthur Schwartz, writing on the city's food, places the oyster among the foundations of New York eating, and the institution that grew around it, the room given over to the raw and cooked bivalve, was a product of that abundance. The form travelled from the Atlantic ports to the Gulf and the Pacific coast, but the New York house remains its reference point.

The essential business of an oyster bar is the opening of oysters to order and their service at once, on ice, with the least that will do them justice. The shucker stands at the working heart of the room, and the dish lives or dies by his hand: the knife must sever the muscle cleanly, leave the liquor in the shell, and send out an oyster free of grit and shell fragment, set loose from the bottom shell and ready to be taken in one motion. The bivalve is served very cold, over crushed ice, on the half shell, and the accompaniments are few: lemon, a sharp vinegar sauce or a cocktail sauce of tomato and horseradish, and crackers or bread and butter. The restraint is the point, because the oyster carries the salinity and mineral character of the water it grew in. Beside the raw bar stands a short repertory of cooked dishes, and these are what distinguish the oyster house from a mere counter. The oyster stew, in which oysters are warmed in milk or cream with butter and their own liquor until the edges curl, is the plainest of them and the most exacting, since a moment too long toughens the flesh. Fried oysters, pan roasts and the oyster served in a rich stewed preparation belong to the same tradition, and each is built to keep the oyster tender within a hot, seasoned frame. A cook working from these models should treat the oyster as nearly finished before it reaches the pan. The room itself is part of the institution. The oyster bar is a place of counters, stools and quick turnover, a house where a customer may stand or sit briefly, eat a dozen and leave, or settle for a longer meal. It served workers and the well-to-do under one roof, and that range of custom is characteristic of the city that produced it. The tiled, plain interior and the visible labour of the shucker are inheritances of that working origin. The handling of the oyster is governed by the discipline of the cold chain. Oysters must be held live, kept chilled, and discarded if the shell is open and does not close, or if the flesh is dry or smells of anything but the sea. Because they are eaten raw, the temperature control and sourcing of the product are matters of safety as much as of taste, and a good house keeps its stock traceable and cold from the water to the plate. This discipline, as much as any recipe, is what the oyster bar teaches.

The taste of an oyster is that of its water: brine, a clean mineral edge, and a sweetness that rises as the salt recedes. The accompaniments are chosen to sharpen rather than cover it, with lemon, vinegar or horseradish cutting through the richness of the flesh. In the stew and the fried oyster, butter, cream and a crisp crumb supply richness, and the cook's task is to keep the oyster's own flavour at the centre.