Chew, not swallow: There is a right way to enjoy an oyster
The price of oysters changed years ago. It is time the conversation caught up
IN 2017, I became a judge for the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW’s Oyster Judging. I walked in thinking I knew oysters well enough. I had worked with them for years, eaten plenty, and felt I had a sound handle on what made a good one. Then I sat down alongside marine biologists, oyster growers and representatives of the Department of Primary Industries (NSW) who had been studying this single species longer than I had been alive, and I did the only sensible thing: I closed my mouth and leaned in.
What followed, across years of judging, changed the way I think about oysters entirely. And I believe it should change the way the restaurant industry talks about them, too.
At some point over the last five years, oyster prices in Australian restaurants moved almost overnight from three or four dollars a piece to eight or nine. No new information came with that increase. No news story, no greater transparency about where the oyster came from, who grew it or what made it worth the hike in price. The oyster still sits at the top of a menu, flanked by a mignonette or a finger lime, and rarely accompanied by anything that might help a guest understand what they are actually eating.
If you are going to charge that price, you owe the guest a reason. The price shifted. The conversation didn’t. Partly, higher prices reflect diminished supply caused by heavy flooding and disease outbreaks. But they also reflect the quality of the product.
What is merroir?
The most useful idea I have encountered in all my years around oysters came from seafood authority John Susman. He drew a direct line between oysters and wine, specifically between the concept of merroir and the winemaker’s notion of terroir. When John first put this to me, it reframed everything.
Terroir is how we understand fine wine. The geography, the soil, the water table and the specific conditions of a place create something that cannot be replicated anywhere else. The world’s most serious chefs – Ana Roš, Virgilio Martínez, Michel Bras – have built entire bodies of work around this idea applied to ingredients.
Merroir is the same principle in the sea. Where an oyster dwells determines everything about it. Move it into a faster current and the adductor muscle strengthens, producing more sweetness. Leave it in sea grasses close to shore and it develops more minerality, a more herbaceous character and a different salinity profile altogether. These are not subtle differences. They are the direct result of decisions made by a grower over months, sometimes years.
Australia has some of the finest oyster growers on the planet. Gary Rodley of Tathra Oysters and Shane Buckley of Wapengo Rocks have been the benchmark for Sydney rock oysters for decades. What they produce is not a commodity. It is a craft product as specific to its location as any serious wine, and it deserves to be spoken about that way.
Time changes an oyster
At Saint Peter, we hold rock oysters at exactly 10°C. We have refrigerated drawers that allow us to serve up to eight different growing locations at once. This temperature setting isn’t arbitrary. It’s the point at which a rock oyster holds its condition and delivers the full breadth of its flavour. Serve it colder and you suppress it. Putting an excellent rock oyster on ice is the equivalent of dropping ice cubes into a great bottle of Burgundy.
But the more interesting discovery is what happens over the course of days. We have tested oysters from Tathra, Wapengo and Batemans Bay, tracking them daily, for up to 15 days. Every single test has shown the same result: the oyster peaks somewhere between days six and eight, when the flavour becomes more rounded and complex, the texture denser. An excellent oyster, properly kept, does not simply hold its condition; it climbs towards something better.
You need to chew it
Most people swallow an oyster. But this experience is one-dimensional. A bit salty, a little oceanic. That’s about it. What they have missed is everything the oyster has to offer.
Chew the adductor muscle and you release glycogen, which is where the oyster’s sweetness lives. That sweetness balances the salt, completely changing the experience. Chew the mantle, the outer skirt, and you get the umami depth, flavours not unlike kombu or wakame. The condition of the central meat tells you whether the oyster is at its peak. When it is fat and full, reaching all the way to the edge of the shell, you are looking at an oyster carrying peak lipid content. Rich, buttery, sometimes almost dairy-like in texture. That is what a Sydney rock oyster, grown by someone who genuinely cares, looks and tastes like.
Now, a single oyster in that condition, at the right temperature, offers enough length of flavour to justify the price entirely. But you will not find any of that if you do not slow down and chew.
Josh Niland is an award-winning chef and owner of Sydney’s Saint Peter restaurant
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The question that inspired Peter Fiander’s menu for Sydney dining spot Osteria Luna
