Robb Walsh :: Texas Eats » oysters

Texas Oyster Season Ends Early

robbwalsh — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:59:19 +0000

The Texas Department of Health closed the oyster season on Friday due to an algae bloom. The problem isn’t the potentially deadly vibrio vulnificus, but another organism called dinophysis, which is usually found in colder waters. The organism is often a problem in Scandinavia where it is responsible for mussel bed closings in the North Sea. Scientists believe the organism was introduced to Texas in illegally discharged ballast from European ships.

Dinophysis builds up in oyster tissue and can cause intestinal illness in those who eat infected oysters. The algae has turned up all along the Gulf Coast this spring causing oyster reef closings across the region. Oyster season on Texas public reefs was due to close on April 31 anyway, but the Health department closing will also affect oyster leaseholders who usually sell oysters throughout the summer when the public season is closed.

Oysters and Politics at Gilhooley’s

robbwalsh — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 14:14:54 +0000

Oysters Gihooley won several more converts yesterday. Mike Lavigne, a government relations consultant from Austin was in town to learn about the oyster biz. He liked the pecan-smoked barbecued oysters a whole lot. So did my buddy John Bebout. I couldn’t believe Bebout never had them before.

At Lavigne’s request, we put together a rump council of the oyster industry in San Leon to discuss some of the political problems in the Texas oyster biz. It was a very interesting discussion.

Over in Louisiana, the oyster business enjoys lots of support from the state. There is plenty of funding for projects that benefit the fishery and lots of new research. Dr. John Supan at LSU is building an oyster hatchery. He is experimenting with raising oysters in bags, purifying summer oysters in high saline water and improving genetics.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, the state is doing less than nothing. Oystermen pay a 33¢ per bag fee to the state. Miso Ivic who owns Misho’s Oysters and Johnny and Lisa Halili who own Prestige Oyster were there at Gilhooley’s. They said that they had paid millions of dollars to the state in fees over the years.

The tag fee money used to come back to the industry. It was given to Texas Parks and Wildlife for enforcement and to the Texas Dept. of State Health Services for water quality testing. Then the Texas legislature cut back on payments. The state still pays out about $150,000 a year for the water quality testing, but the rest of the money has disappeared into the general revenue.

We are talking about $250,000 to $300,000 a year, peanuts in the big picture. But that money would go a long way if it were applied to a marketing effort to promote Texas oysters across the country. Jim Gossen of Louisiana Foods is already working on a program to sell select Gulf oysters by place names. It’s a program that could change the reputation of Texas oysters and make oyster fishermen and dealers a lot more money. But it needs to be a group effort. The Louisiana folks are interested. So what about Texas?

Maybe Mike Lavigne can figure out some way to get the Texas Legislature interested in the state’s oyster fishery. I am thinking the first thing we need to do is to get some state reps down to San Leon to eat some Oysters Gilhooley.

Oysters as a Cure-All

robbwalsh — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:43:33 +0000

Preacher Pappy won fourth place in the oyster decorating contest at Fulton Oysterfest in 2009. I suspect that this Preacher Pappy Oyster Brew wagon was this year’s entry in the contest. I didn’t try any — not because I don’t believe in the medicinal value of oyster tonic. There simply wasn’t any thing ailing me that a couple of cold beers and a few dozen raw oysters couldn’t cure.

Charbroiled Oysters at Drago’s

robbwalsh — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:35:26 +0000

While I was in New Orleans for the Louisiana Oyster Producers meeting, I joined Dr. John Supan on the annual oyster-eating tour he calls his “entourage.” We started with the charbroiled oysters at Drago’s in Metairie. These are prepared on a gas grill by dumping garlicky butter and oil on shucked oysters until the flames shoot up all around the bivalves and char the parmesan cheese and the oyster shells. The char is the key to the incredible flavor. As I reported in Sex, Death & Oysters, these are among the best grilled oysters on the planet.

Drago’s didn’t even serve grilled oysters when it opened 40 years ago.

Drago

Drago’s was opened by Croatian immigrant Drago Cvitanovich. Many of Louisiana’s oystermen are Croatians, some of them live in Louisiana during the oyster season and Croatia the rest of the year. Drago worked for two years as a shucker at Acme Oyster House in the French Quarter before opening his own oyster bar and restaurant in 1970.

Drago’s son Tommy is the second generation owner of the popular restaurant. It was Tommy who invented “charbroiled oysters.” Today, 90 percent of Drago’s customers order Drago’s version of grilled oysters. Drago’s Seafood Restaurant and Oyster Bar, 3232 N. Arnoult Road, Metairie, Louisiana, (504) 888-9254

The Wizard of Oysters

robbwalsh — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:58:54 +0000

Dr. John Supan

Dr. John Supan, head of oyster research at LSU, is a visionary who is leading the Louisiana oyster industry out of the 19th century and into a brave new world of oyster farming. Supan built an oyster hatchery in Western Louisiana that would have revolutionized the leasing business, if it hadn’t been destroyed by hurricanes. Undaunted, he is building another hatchery on Grand Isle. He is also developing a Gulf triploid. A triploid is a sterile oyster that retains its sweet plumpness through the summer because it doesn’t convert glycogen to gonad.

Dr. Supan, or “Soup” as he prefers to be known, invited me to speak at his annual oyster get-together in New Orleans last week. I asked Jim Gossen to come along and help me present a new idea in Gulf oyster marketing. I’ll write more about my talk and my modest proposal to the Louisiana oystermen over the course of the week.

But first, check out what Supan is up to.

The meeting of the Louisiana Oyster Producers Association was focused on the FDA’s threat to close down the summer oyster business because of the continuing vibro vulnificus problem. Speakers presented new alternatives in post-harvest treatment of summer oysters. Irradiation and high salinity treatments are two promising new alternatives. Unlike current treatments, like pasteurization and freezing, the new methods kill vibrio vulnificus bacteria without killing the oyster.

Be it rational or not, the very idea of irradiation scares people. But the high salinity solution is actually an old idea that’s already been proven. And the cool thing about this form of post-harvest treatment is that it has the side effect of making the oysters extra salty. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? The state of Louisiana will be asked to help build a treatment area in a salty bay–essentially a bunch of racks where the oysters can sit around underwater and slurp up the brine. It will probably be awhile before we see the results.

Just think–if you could produce a Gulf oyster triploid and purify it by submerging it in a high salinity area, you could produce a fat sweet, and salty summer oyster that’s also free of bacteria.

And that’s an oyster worth eating in months without an R.

Fulton Oysterfest 2010

robbwalsh — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:18:55 +0000

The first weekend in March is prime time for Gulf oysters. It’s also the date for the annual Oysterfest in Fulton. I spent the weekend in this tiny fishing port near Rockport along with a whole lot of tourists. Every year, tens of thousands of festival-goers eat several tons of raw oysters. The oysters here are eaten under the big top with cold beer and live music. It reminded me a little of Galway’s Oyster Festival–only with Lone Star instead of Guinness.

A New Convert to Gulf Oysters

robbwalsh — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:53:48 +0000

photo by Robb Walsh

In this review of Sex, Death & Oysters on the entertaining Eat Me Daily food blog, I make a convert:

One thing this book did do, if nothing else, was inspire me to go out and try my first Galveston Bay oysters (though as of this writing we’re a bit closer to the Easter endcap of the Texan oyster season that I’d have liked). As Walsh promised, they were different than any other oyster I’ve ever eaten: tremendous in size — some were half the size of my fist — with creamy, soft flesh that was an entirely different flavor than the briny, salty East Coast oysters that had previously made up the entirety of my oyster-eating repertoire. Consider me converted, Walsh. -Paula Forbes

Slimy, Salty, and Historically Vital

robbwalsh — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:58:30 +0000

Canada’s National Post reviewed Sex, Death & Oysters in the April 3 issue in a book review titled Slimy, Salty and HIstorically Vital–in their format each review ends with the question “Buy It or Skip It?” Thank goodness the book got the “Buy It” verdict!

Read the full review:

Posted: April 03, 2009, 5:49 PM by Becky Guthrie
Book Reviews, Non-Fiction, Buy It or Skip it?, Robb Walsh, Death and Oysters, Sex

This is noted food writer Robb Walsh’s quest to understand the oyster cultures of the world, and to taste every oyster-producing nation’s half-shelled treasures. To this end, he travels from the Gulf Coast, where most of America’s oysters come from, to the coast of Ireland, where he drank Guinness and ate thoroughly decent oysters with “a bunch of crazy Irishmen.” It is through his travels that he began to understand the place of oysters in Western history. “Oysters were important in the Roman Empire, they’re in Shakespeare, there’s this symbolism in English literature of oysters as vulnerability,” Walsh says. “They’re a part of Western civilization. We only stopped eating them in the Dark Ages, but then ate them again in the Renaissance. And then we had another dark age of oysters right after the Industrial Revolution because we polluted the water and poisoned them.” In the past century or so, Walsh says, oysters have experienced their own renaissance. They may not be the bounteous and available food of the people that they were in Colonial times, but they have returned grandly to public consciousness. Writing in the San Antonio Express-News, Ariel Barkhurst concludes her review saying: “If you love oysters, this is the book for you. And if you don’t, try a Gulf Coast oyster between November and March, when they’re sweetest, says Walsh, and then see how you feel.”

Buy it.

Everyday Oysters

robbwalsh — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:01:09 +0000

I had oysters for breakfast in honor of Ariel Barkhurst’s review of Sex, Death & Oysters in the San Antonio Express-News, which is headlined: “Writer Says Oysters Should Be Everyday Fare.” Here’s Ariel’s review:

Sex, Death and Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover’s World Tour

By Robb Walsh

Counterpoint, $25

Robb Walsh, who has been nominated for four prestigious James Beard Awards for his writing about food and dining, says that his job is to understand culture through what we eat.

And in his new book “Sex, Death, and Oysters: A Half-Shell Lover’s World Tour,” he enlists the feared and revered little mollusk to do that.

“Oysters occupy an incredibly central place in our culture,” he said during a recent interview. “The best parallel I can think of is bread — bread is dull, but you’ve got the Catholic Mass, the Eucharist, all these associations. And oysters are very similar. They occupy this place — ‘the world is my oyster,’ the walrus and the carpenter, the idea of them as an aphrodisiac. An oyster is this quivering innocence wrapped in a shell, with the power in our hands as we hold it.”

“Sex, Death, and Oysters” is a quest to understand the oyster cultures of the world, and to taste every oyster-producing nation’s half-shelled treasures.

For the book, Walsh traveled from the Gulf Coast, where most of America’s oysters come from today, to the coast of Ireland, where Walsh drank Guinness and ate thoroughly decent oysters with “a bunch of crazy Irishmen.”

It is through his travels that he began to understand the place of oysters in Western history.

“Oysters were important in the Roman Empire, they’re in Shakespeare, there’s this symbolism in English literature of oysters as vulnerability,” Walsh said.

“They’re a part of Western civilization. We only stopped eating them in the Dark Ages, but then ate them again in the Renaissance. And then we had another dark age of oysters right after the Industrial Revolution because we polluted the water and poisoned them.”

In the past century or so, Walsh says, oysters have experienced their own renaissance. They may not be the bounteous and available food of the people that they were in Colonial times, but they have returned grandly to public consciousness.

And in America, they’ve returned to consciousness so much that we’ve already fished out the oyster beds of New England.

“There were these places in the old days that were famous for oysters,” Walsh said. “None of these places have any oysters anymore. They were fished out, and their day has come and gone. But there still are oysters in other places, like the Gulf Coast. And people gather up the oysters from the new places, drag them to the old places, and pass them off as oysters from those old places!”

Another primary message of the book, Walsh says, is that oysters are the lost food of the people. The reason Gulf oystermen feel compelled to pass off their oysters as New England fare may be that oysters have become something more precious than than the hearty fare they have been historically.

“We’ve lost something as a culture,” Walsh says. “Everybody used to have an oyster shucking night, and they’d eat oysters at home. Eat oysters at home, have an oyster party. They’re 20 cents a piece at the shore.”

If you love oysters, this is the book for you. And if you don’t, try a Gulf Coast oyster between November and March, when they’re sweetest, says Walsh, and then see how you feel.