surfers51

By Eugenia Chien
Thu, June 18, 2009, 12:01 am PDT
The Elite Cafe's oyster shooter
"Bottoms up!" The Elite Cafe's
oyster shooter
(Photo by jessbess1)
Of all the foods that can evoke strong feelings, the oyster takes the crown. It can provoke swoons of delight or disgust. It is an aphrodisiac and a delicacy. But did you ever think that the oyster leads "a dreadful but exciting life" characterized by "stress, passion, and danger?"

Those are the words of M.F.K. Fisher, the celebrated food writer who died 17 years ago this week. Of her many books on eating simply and well, my favorite is "Consider the Oyster," published in 1941. Reading this slim book inspired me to go on an oyster crawl in my own San Francisco neighborhood, where the oyster has become a staple of happy hours.

My fellow Yahoo! editor Jessica and I began our "Pac Heights Oyster Crawl" at the revered Swan's Oyster Depot. To be honest, in all my time living in San Francisco, I had never once ventured into this famously divey seafood bar, despite walking past it every day. We sat down just in time for the friendly guys behind the bar to serve up some super-fresh seafood cocktails (shrimp, crab, lobster meat, and clams topped with a big Blue Point oyster) and sourdough bread. Halfway through my beer, our oysters arrived: two kinds of Miyagi oysters (one local from Tomales Bay and the other from Washington state) and sweet Kumamotos (Jessica's favorites). All were crisp and clean.

The oyster starts out his "devil-may-care" infancy as a male, but that quickly changes. Fisher tells us in her book that "one day, maternal longings surge between his two valves in his cold guts and gills and all his crinkly fringes. Necessity, that well-known mother, makes him one. He is a she."

Just as quickly as the oyster changes its identity, we hopped into a cab to hit our next oyster destination, The Elite Café. The restaurant's $1 happy hour ends at 6 p.m., and we were not about to miss it. From the handful of oysters at the bar (two types were $1, the rest were $2 each), we sampled the buttery Skookum, the strong, bright Hama Hama (my own favorite), and a few Kumamotos. The bar's exceptional cocktail list includes an "Oyster Shooter" (an oyster swimming in jalapeno vodka and cocktail sauce). While Jessica sipped on her very sophisticated Blanton's bourbon over ice, I dared to down the shooter.

Only when the oyster becomes a female does it gain the appearance that is familiar to most diners. "She has grown into a gray-white oval shape, with shades of green or ocher or black in her gills and a rudimentary brain in the forepart of her blind deaf body," Fisher writes.

Oh, no, the oyster has a "rudimentary brain?" Feeling guilty about subjecting the poor oyster to jalapeno vodka (and my esophagus), we moved sluggishly onto our final destination, the Woodhouse Fish Company. A new addition to the ‘hood, this small local chain's $1 oyster happy hour offered creamy Dabob Bay oysters on a bed of seaweed and ice. (We didn't have the stamina to sample the restaurant's BBQ oysters.) Our resolve to sample the slippery, raw bivalves was wearing thin, though the restaurant's potato gratin and French fries more than rounded out our meal.

The life of an oyster is short, Fisher writes. "Its chilly, delicate gray body slips into a stewpan or under a broiler or alive down a red throat, and it is done." And so was our first oyster crawl -- but it is definitely not our last. As Fisher writes, "[The oyster's] life has been thoughtless but no less full of danger, and now that it is over we are perhaps better for it."

Suggested Sites...

* What Kind of Oyster Eater Are You? - shrinking violet, brine hound, or the wild one?
* How to Order Oysters at a Raw Bar - ... and look cool doing it.
* The Oyster Guide - like wine and cheese, oysters owe much of their flavor to terroir.
* How to Shuck an Oyster - without injuring yourself.
* SF Weekly: The Dollar Oyster List - the best in bargain Bay bivalves.

Directory categories: M.F.K. Fisher, Oyster Recipes, San Francisco Restaurants, Seafood Recipes, Food Writers
Archived under: Authors, California, Eating, Food and Drink, In Character, Restaurants, San Francisco, Writers
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