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Seth Fein was born in Urbana and now lives in downtown Champaign. He owns and operates The Nicodemus Agency, is the founder and curator of Pygmalion Music Festival, and is an assistant talent buyer at The Canopy Club. He loves the Purdue Boilermakers and his wife's marinara sauce.
I have a particular image in my head. It's of an overweight mobster-type, sitting at a bar with his jacket off and suspenders displayed. His gut hangs over his belt line and as he puffs on a Monte Cristo, every so often he reaches over and grabs up half an oyster shell, squeezes a touch of lemon and splashes a douse of sauce on it.
Down it goes. Over and over and over.
I'd be lying if some part of me didn't want this image to actually be me.
That sound you hear is my wife filing divorce papers.
Okay. That was a stretch. But the truth is that there is almost nothing as satisfying to me as downing a dozen fresh oysters on the halfshell while munching peanuts and drinking a cold pilsner beer. It's a true pleasure of mine, and one that is, unfortunately, fairly uncommon for me to partake in here in the ol' C-U.
Ever since The City of New Orleans closed its doors in 2001, our towns have lacked a restaurant that regularly serves up this known aphrodisiac, save for when Jim Gould was doing it as recently as last winter.
Back when the train station restaurant seemed to be thriving, I can remember spending $8–$10 on a dozen pretty large oysters, served up just like you see them on the picture above. Oh sure, they weren't always available, and there is no doubt that they weren't totally fresh either. But nevertheless, they did the trick.
"Oysters?" you say. "In the middle of cornfields with nary a drop of saltwater in sight?"
Ah — but you are forgetting one of our most prized commodities living here in C-U. We sit right on the train line from which the restaurant mentioned above took its name: The City of New Orleans.
Every other day, this train carries hundreds of pounds of oysters up from New Orleans through Jackson and Memphis on its way to Chicago, stopping you know where on the way. And naturally, there is no hobo selling these shells off the tracks by the bag, but this mere realization is enough to make me ponder the notion of a return to this after work delight.
Costly as they may be, if I know restaurants, I know that there could be value in peddling these mollusks. Restaurants make money in places you might not suspect. One of the most common is at the bar. Those three martinis that you bought your girlfriend last Friday at that downtown joint might have netted the restaurant bar a cool 250% profit, while the actual meal was served up at a small loss. And as such, its in their best interest to get you in the bar, drinking and keep you there.
I can buy them at the store for just under $.65 a piece, which means kitchens can buy them commercially even cheaper. Hell, mark 'em up a notch and sell them at $10 a dozen or $17 for two dozen. The idea is to get me in the bar. Treat it like a half-priced appetizer and only make it available when sitting in the bar area, even. I don't really care.
I'll bite. Literally. And I'll buy a drink or three while I am there.
So, who's got it in them, old friends? Who in these fair towns will bring to us a full plate of these slippery yet saliva-inducing treats from the gulf? Won't someone do me the favor?
Comments (3)
Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:17 AM
I'd be happy with a decent egg sandwich in downtown Urbana. Damn.
Thursday, October 16, 2008 11:35 PM
dude... I just had oysters from Newfoundland tonight at Bacaro.... cheggit
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 3:13 PM
When I moved to Florida, after growing up in Urbana, I thought oysters were something that you ate fried if you were real adventurous. Now, more than a few years later, I'm buying oysters by the bushel ($32 dollars last weekend for a burlap bag of Apalachacola goodness.
I can't speak to the oysters that get shipped from NOLA to Chicago, but from my jaded perspective, sliders are all about location. I've eaten them on the east coast, the west coast, in Europe and Asia. I've never found any that were as good as those from the Apalachacola Bay. The water here is still pretty clean and the oysters fat and salty.
I've gotten pretty good at opening the little boogers and have acquired a respectable collection of oyster knives. The weirdest looking one was made out of a railroad spike by a local blacksmith, but my current favorite is one I picked up in Tokyo last year. It's kind of a "safety third" sort of tool with a dangerous sharp angled end but it really works well.
Of course the real secret to opening oysters has to do with selection. I can almost always tell with a quick glance if it's going to be an easy opener. If not, I throw it on the grill and let it steam open. As odd as it may sound, there are some people who would rather eat oysters warm and cooked than cold and raw.
That brings up the prep issue. When we get oysters from the shacks at the coast, they come covered in a nice coat of Gulf of Mexico mud. Some seafood vendors advertise that their oysters are pre-washed, which in my mind, is a major seafood sin. If I wash mine at all, it's right before I open them. Any earlier and you lose the peak of salty goodness.
Some people think that a saltine cracker is necessary and others think that sauce is important. For me, it's a matter of shucking and slurping. Anything else just takes away from the taste sensation.
A bushel, or even a half bushel, is a lot of sliders, but I never let them go to waste. If we don't finish them up the first night around the fire, there are oyster pancakes in the morning, oyster stew for lunch and if there are any left for dinner, we might even bake up a few.
Davie Brightbill grew up on Eliot Drive in Urbana and now lives near Tallahassee on the Gulf coast of Florida.