Oysters

Appears in
Soup: A Way of Life
Soup

By Barbara Kafka

Published 1998

  • About
Oysters seem to come with as many names as wine, and the names refer to many different things: Some refer to the place where the oysters are grown; some to the species, of which there are only six; and some are made up and are no help at all.

Brought up in New York, I started young with oysters named after their port of origin, namely Blue Point (“bloo pernts,” as A. J. Leibling would have pointed out) from nearby Long Island. A period of living in Boston introduced me to Cape Cod’s. Little did I know then that these slowest-growing (five years to maturity) and best of East Coast oysters would be subdivided into naming by town: Wellfleet, Chatham, and Wareham.