24. Recipes from the United States – Part Two, Rhode Island to New Jersey

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top 1000North Atlantic Seafood
North Atlantic Seafood

By Alan Davidson

Published 1980

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Further on, when we come to the Chesapeake, the emphasis will be on crab recipes; and for the Carolinas and Georgia we shall be making much of shrimp dishes. In the present section clams hold sway. It was, after all, as ‘clamdiggers’ that men from Long Island were known to their comrades in the World Wars.

Yet oysters must also figure here, for the eating of oysters reaches a sort of zenith in New York City, where oysters from Long Island vie with those from points north, including the unsurpassable ones from Wellfleet, and points south such as Chesapeake, richest source of all. It is ironic that these creatures, which pass stationary lives, should be assembled in such multitudes to meet their end in a place where all is movement, where the tides of human beings flow more swiftly and sharply than anywhere else except perhaps Tokyo; and that even within this tumultuous metropolis the principal altar on which they are sacrificed should be the oyster bar in the Grand Central Station, whose very raison d’être is perpetual motion.