Oyster Roast

Last night I went to an oyster roast! It’s one of my favorite activities of the Lowcountry.

We drove down to the gazebo down by the marsh where you could harvest your own oysters. We were going to be eatin’ some mighty fresh oysters taken from the waters “right’s chear”. It was dark by the time we arrived. As I walked from the car, I could see people already huddled around the tables starting to eat. The fires were blazing and the oysters a cookin’.

What happens at an oyster roast?

Well, you stand around a wooden table that stands between chest and waist high with a big square hole cut out in the middle where you throw the shells after you are done eating. First, the cooks take shovels full of hot steaming oysters and heap them on the table. (If you are cool, you have brought your own glove and oyster knife. If not, then you can just use the community knife on the table.)

Now, what you want to do is to reach over and take one of those hot steaming oysters. Hold it firmly in your left hand while you find the slight opening between the two shells, and with your knife in your right hand, force the shell apart to find the plump, just steamed flesh inside. I like the big oysters where the meat is barely cooked, hot and moist and delicious. A couple of times I got two oysters that had fastened together, with the baby oyster on the outside, its meat firm and well-done and almost smoky tasting, like those smoked oysters my parents would put on Ritz crackers during one of their cocktail parties in the 1960s, and then the main oyster filled with the succulent meat inside, almost raw, but still cooked. The taste of the two size oysters varies so much, it’s almost as if you are eating two different dishes.

Just keep going this way until you have had enough. We had a meal served afterwards, which I don’t understand because once you have eaten your fill of oysters, there shouldn’t be much room in your tummy. Maybe some folks just don’t like oysters. I’m just not one of them.