Now every month is an oyster month

Nation's Restaurant News, July 24, 1995 by Florence Fabricant

The warm-weather spring and summer months, May through August, are the ones spelled without an "R." According to tradition, they should be the months without oysters. But at a time when fancy restaurants are serving meat loaf and chefs are putting thyme in the ice cream, tradition has become a weak argument.

In the case of oysters, however, the prohibition about eating them in the warmer months had to do with the difficulty in keeping them cold enough. Also, in summer, oysters would go into their annual spawning season. And a spawning oyster may have a bitter taste. The texture during and just after spawning also becomes thin and milky.

But, as Sandy Ingber, the buyer for the Oyster Bar in New York's Grand Central Station, has found, not all oysters spawn at the same time. He said there are so many sources for oysters now that it has become easy to find them from nonspawning areas all summer. Those raised in colder waters, from Canada and Alaska, for example, may hardly spawn at all. And he can also buy Southern Hemisphere oysters, unheard of a few years ago.

The result? Year-round oysters.

Starting this spring, restaurants in the New York region have been opening oyster bars at a steady clip. Verbena, Flowers, 9 Jones St., Lenox Room, Match Uptown, Garage and American Renaissance all have newly minted bar areas where oysters and other cold shellfish are served over shaved ice. Blue Ribbon in SoHo has had one for several years.

Seafood operations without oyster bars, like Oceana and Sea Grill, are adding them.

Elsewhere in the country in seafood operations as well as restaurants like Stars and Roti in San Francisco, oyster bars are busier than ever before in summer. Along with oyster and clams, these operations offer shrimp, crawfish, lobster and crab. The Lenox Room serves mussels vinaigrette and caviar as well. Match Uptown also serves sushi. Cocktail sauce is standard, as is mignonette. Blue Ribbon has its own citrus and diced vegetable condiment.

If serving oysters in summer is a new trend, the newest feature is the care many operations are taking. In addition to being extremely careful about their sources and always keeping them iced, to further minimize any risk, the best producers as well as distributors and even restaurants routinely are now testing shellfish for bacteria counts. The Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington is doing regular testing and making the results available to customers.

And because now there is greater awareness of vibrio vulnificus, a toxin that can affect even the freshest oysters from the cleanest waters, many growers and operations have started testing for it as well. Though scientists have not determined what, if any, the tolerable levels of this bacterium might be, oysters that show no presence of it will be safe. Vibrio vulnificus, which is dangerous for people with certain health problems, occurs mainly in warm waters with low salinity, like those of the Gulf Coast. As a result, many operations have stopped serving Gulf Coast oysters raw. Cooking destroys the bacterium.

An oyster routinely costs an operation 30 to 50 cents. It can be sold for $1.25 to $2, making for average food costs. But as Eric Bromberg of Blue Ribbon explained, the costs are higher because a certain number of oysters in each batch may be rejected. It is also labor-intensive food.

But it's worth it, operators say, because people who eat oysters also drink and tend to spend more. In the final analysis, an oyster bar generates revenue.