Below ground, inside the beehive bustle of New York's Grand Central Terminal, you'll find the Oyster Bar & Restaurant, a low-lit, vaulted dining room and raw bar smelling faintly of seawater. It's a temple to fresh oysters, serving thousands of them to as many as 2,500 people a day. But the menu can be a little tough to crack. You want oysters? Well, you've got Pemaquid, Tatamagouche, and Caraquet. You've got Blue Point and Belon. You've got Glidden Point, Pickle Point, and Raspberry Point; Duck Island and Dutch Isle; Discovery Bay, Westcott Bay, and Judd Cove. The oyster list breaks 30, and reading it straight is like confronting some strange code. You want a dozen on the half shell -- but a dozen of what, exactly?
Who cares, your average philistine might say. Give me a cold beer and a wedge of lemon. Oysters are oysters.
But oysters aren't oysters. They can be fat and sweet, skinny and salty, or mushy and monstrous. Knowing your way around the oyster selection at a good restaurant means finding your favorites -- and impressing the hell out of your friends, co-workers, and the client just in from Omaha. Hence, Oysters 101:
Oysters are bivalve mollusks -- boneless, headless, eyeless creatures with two-sided shells. They survive by eating whatever microscopic plankton happen to drift past. The kind you eat (called "true oysters" as opposed to the jewelry producing "pearl oysters") are farmed or picked wild in the shallower waters of the East and West Coasts. There are five main species of true oyster commonly encountered in the United States: the Olympia, which is thumbnail-size and only occasionally served on the half shell at restaurants; the popular Kumamoto and the sweet Pacific, both originally from Japan; the salty Atlantic; and the pricey European Flat, or Belon. The taste and texture of a particular oyster is determined by the temperature, mineral content, and salinity of its native waters. Therefore, within the broad, common species of Atlantic and Pacific oysters you'll find hundreds of names, each corresponding to the specific harbor, bay, or stretch of coastline from which it came. You couldn't possibly memorize all the names, so focus on the demographics instead.
Start with the coasts. Kumamoto and Pacific oysters -- whether from California, Washington, or British Columbia -- taste pretty similar: generally sweet, fat, and creamy. Atlantic oysters are often saltier, thinner, and less rich. They also can vary more widely in taste; as you go north from Chesapeake Bay up to Nova Scotia, Atlantic oysters become more briny and sharp, tasting more distinctly of the ocean.
Size doesn't affect flavor. Choosing between the big boys (called "chokers" in the oyster trade), best tackled with a fork and knife, or the more manageable petite oysters is purely a personal matter. But the time of year an oyster is harvested can affect the taste. During the summer months oysters spawn, which can make them less fat and less flavorful.
What should you put on an oyster? Try them straight if you really want to get the flavor, though even the pros will use a bit of lemon juice, mignonette (typically made from red wine vinegar and shallots), or, especially on the East Coast, horseradish and cocktail sauce. Drowning an oyster in anything generally means you don't actually like oysters, while slurping the juice left in the shell after you've eaten one suggests you do.
So go to the Oyster Bar (or your local equivalent) and sit down with a glass of champagne, a dry, unoaked white wine, or a cold beer, and try a mixed dozen. Pick your own, or start with these:
Kumamoto
A beginner's oyster. Small in size and consistently sweet, rich, and plump. Once a staple in Japan, Kumamotos are thought to be extinct there now. These days you'll find them farmed in California and the Pacific Northwest. Very common.
Westcott Bay
Larger in size than the Kumamoto (they can reach an intimidating six inches long), though similarly sweet and fat, These Pacific oysters are found in Westcott Bay, just south of the Canadian border in Washington State near a place called Friday Harbor.
Blue Point
A midsize atlantic oyster, inexpensive and very common. A favorite among the Oyster Bar crowd and for good reason. Thinner than a west coast oyster; mild and salty with a real seawater flavor.
Belon
Distinctive for their flat, fragile shell and their challenging metallic, sweet, and salty flavor, Belons attract an intense, devoted following. Grand Central's Oyster Bar will often sell out a day's supply by lunch. Worth a try if you can find any.
Malpeque
A briny, bracing oyster from Canada's Prince Edward Island. Coming from farther north, in colder waters, this is sharper and racier tasting than the Blue Point.
