Oyster Tasting

Who knew that eating an oyster should be compared to tasting wine? Bill and I were in Toronto in June 2008 when we went to Rodney's Oyster House, which was recently named by Travel + Leisure Magazine as one of the top 25 oyster bars in the world. We went with the intent of eating oysters but "tasting"? Not so much. Their menu was so long that we put our faith in our waiter to choose our oysters for us. Not knowing that I'd have a food-themed blog a year later, I didn't think to really pay much attention to which types they were, but he chose 3 different varieties, 4 of each total. I do remember that 2 varieties had the traditional oyster shaped shell but 1 variety had the creepy, gnarly looking shell. (And I'm sure you all know exactly what I'm talking about right?? :) I don't know how else to explain it.) Anyway, the waiter explained that people typically just get their oysters and then top them with whatever they prefer - cocktail sauce, horseradish, crackers, mignonette - and suck 'em down without much thought. Gee, sounds like me. What he told us was that each oyster should be tasted just like wine to determine the brinyness, grassiness, sweetness, etc. He had us taste (and by taste, that meant chew) one oyster of each variety plain and then the second one topped with our choice of accoutrements (which, as a side note, is my new favorite word). It was a really eye-opening experience and we were shocked at the difference in taste between the plain version and the souped up one. We preferred some of them with our toppings which actually enhanced the natural flavors (similar to what food can do for wine) but others were better without. Made us wonder how many other yummy oysters' flavors we had masked by automatically reaching for the horseradish. I urge you to try this yourself but fair warning, if you do this, you may discover that you don't really like oysters at all and what you really like is cocktail sauce. But on the bright side, oysters aren't exactly cheap so you'd save yourself some money when eating out!

Also, some of you may have heard that you should only eat oysters during months containing the later R. While this was based on truth - before the days of refrigeration, oysters would spoil in the heat of the other months - this is no longer true. So eat up!