Chew your oysters

Today I ate three dozen oysters. Is that a lot? I don’t think it’s a lot. I did not eat them quickly or carelessly. I ate them thoughtfully. Thinking of Tony and the three years the oysters have been nourished by the sea in the calm days of late August and the blustery cold of January. I chewed them. Which some people can’t stand. But chewing them releases the oceanic terroir. The slippery rocks, sandy bottoms, clay minerality of their existence.

photo by David Lansing

You chew, sip the local blanc de blanc, and then look out at the sea. And you understand in a way you cannot when you order a dozen oysters on the half shell as an appetizer at some chichi restaurant in New York what it is to be connected to the land and the sea. It took me coming all the way over to this little speck of an island off the French coast to learn this. But is feels like a valuable lesson.