A shellfish equivalent to the farm-to-table movement — let’s call it
seashore-to-shucking-bar — is marrying oyster farms and oysters
bars, to the benefit of bivalve lovers up and down the East Coast.
Increasingly, oyster farms are opening their own oyster bars, many seeking to more profitably vertically
integrate their operations and help shield their monoculture businesses from natural disruptions.
Meanwhile, oyster bars, looking to ensure supply, and offer a top quality, straight-from-the-bayman
branded product, are investing in oyster farms and striking deals with growers.
Little wonder, since, as Bob Rheault, executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers
Association, tells us, “we are in the middle of an explosion in oyster consumption.
“While we’ve had a doubling in production in just the last five years, we are also seeing prices
increasing 2 to 4 percent a year,” he says, “which tells me demand is increasing even faster. I look around
me in Rhode Island and see a proliferation of raw bars.”
A prime example of the new breed is Matunuck Oyster Bar, opened by oyster farmer Perry Raso in
South Kingston, R.I., as much by happenstance as design. Raso had expanded his 1-acre oyster farm to
4 acres, but was still running his wholesale business out of a rental house. So he bought a commercial
property, complete with a derelict restaurant, solely for the docks and better access to Potter Pond, the
saltwater estuary he’d chosen for his oyster farm. With no more food service experience than having once
bused tables in a Chinese restaurant, Raso opened a seafood restaurant.
Today, five years later, Matunuck Oyster Bar shucks as many as 3,000 oysters on a busy summer day,
roughly one-third of them grown on the ever-expanding oyster farm visible from the restaurant’s second
floor. Raso farms two varieties: Matunucks, which he grows in cages; and Potter Moons, grown on the
seafloor. “Directly on the sand,” explains Raso. “They absorb more calcium from the sediment, and because
they’re not opening their abductor as much, they wind up being a little brinier and a little less sweet.”
Here and elsewhere, the day of the house oyster has dawned. The equivalent of a brewpub selling
its own fresh IPA and expertly describing its special characteristics across the bar, oysters farmed, and
sometimes named especially for an oyster bar, are enhancing the raw bar experience. Often they help
facilitate special happy hour prices. Always, they’re a talking point, a familiar brand on the oyster menu
as other varieties come and go.
EASTERN HOME & TRAVEL
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