Back in the day, when you went to a restaurant to slurp down some oysters, you had one option--oysters. You assumed they were local but their exact origin was unannounced. Later you had two choices--East Coast or West Coast--but by and large, oysters were still oysters.
But in recent years, as with anything delicious and marketable, the branding of oysters has taken off. First, Kumamotos (which are themselves a little confusing, since they're both a separate species and a brand) swept the scene, then Beausoleils and Kusshis (the latter a different type of Kumamoto) became the darlings of the raw bar.
Meanwhile, as the battle of the trendy bivalves raged, a whole world of specific oysters was assembling, most named for where they came from. Malpeques (after the bay on PEI), Island Creeks (a freshwater outlet in Duxbury Bay, MA), your Otter Coves (Puget Sound), and so on, all of which taste slightly different because of the particular environment they lived in. "Merroir," the oceanic equivalent of terroir, is a real thing--oysters feed by constantly filtering the water they're in, so they pick up a lot of the salt, plant life, or whatever happens to be floating around in their habitat--so these place-names, even if they can get a little obscure, do make sense.
Recently, however, I've noticed that oyster names are getting lessdescriptive in any real way, and are just becoming zippy names.Moonstones, Stingrays, Shibumis: all evocative, but definitely notinformative. Maybe the most extreme example yet of this is The NakedCowboy oyster, which I've seen pop up on menus all over NYC thisseason.
The Naked Cowboys are grown at the Blue Island ShellfishFarms on Long Island, NY, making them a sound local choice for NYCeaters, but there's something about the name that seems to have madethem stick. As raw bar menus get more and more complex, ordering aTimes Square icon as your oyster (for those who haven't heard of him, the Naked Cowboyis a real guy who wanders around 42nd Street in his underoos playingguitar) simplifies things and makes the eatingexperience a bit more memorable, too.
Later this week we'll talk to Erin Byers Murray, the author of a new book about her yearspent farming oysters in Duxbury, MA, so she might be able to tell usif oyster branding is here to stay or not. My guess is that it won't belong before restaurants start selling their own brand of proprietarymollusks. French Laundry Oysters, anyone? --Andrew Knowlton, with Sam Dean
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