3
MEET THE OYSTERS, AND THE PARISIANS’ LOVE FOR THEM
Let us consider again the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, the ne plus ultra of French opulence and grandeur, the arbiter of French taste for generations of the wealthy… a renowned image and symbol of La France. It doesn’t get more French than that, does it?
Well, besides appreciating good wit, King Louis XIV loved oysters. He loved them so much, he had them sent almost daily by horseback from Cancale, in Brittany, down to Versailles or his palace in Paris.
He loved oysters to the extent that he is reported to have eaten six dozen at times before a meal. (Well, Balzac could eat ten dozen straight.)
“Louie” loved them so much that when a basket arrived late for a lunch, the Prince of Condé’s steward fell on his sword.
He loved green oysters from the Marennes-Oléron. He loved oysters cool and raw, but his personal physicians advised him to eat them cooked, for fear on warmer days he would accidentally eat one that had spoiled along the hot journey from the sea and become ill.
He loved oysters with wine. And, no doubt, the king of France often drank the king of wines with his oysters: Champagne. As king, like his brethren, he was crowned in the cathedral in Reims, the capital of the Champagne region, and the bubbly grape from eastern France flowed in the royal court. As Champagne was no stranger to the courts and kings of France, neither were oysters. Louis XIV’s grandfather, Henry IV, was a known aficionado of these bivalves.
Oysters and Champagne, a glorious marriage made in heaven. Yet a marriage that is democratic in that many people can now consume these items just as the richest kings of France have. (Today a glass or two of NV Champagne and a dozen oysters cost less than many a pair of sneakers.) Merci.
Oysters, though, have curiously been at times the food of the poor and the food of the elite, of the starving and of the gourmets.
Oysters have been around since the times of the dinosaurs, and eating them stretches back into prehistory and ranges across continents and social classes. Charles Dickens in The Pickwick Papers describes oysters as food for the poor, yet oysters were staples at Roman feasts and in seventeenth-century European feasts.
The discoverers of America found native oysters in abundance. And along the East, West, and Gulf Coasts, oysters were widely consumed through the nineteenth century—town after town had its oyster lunchrooms, saloons, bars, parlors, and, of course, outdoor stalls. I am happy to note that oysters are making a big American comeback in the twenty-first century.
The Union Oyster House, a famous oyster restaurant in Boston that has been in continuous operation since 1826, has an interesting French connection. Many famous people have eaten there, dating back to the influential Senator Daniel Webster, a regular known to routinely devour plate after plate of the bivalves.
The building that houses the Union Oyster House (originating as the Atwood & Bacon Oyster House upon opening), now a national historic landmark, was built around 1704. Before becoming a restaurant, the building housed a dress shop on its ground floor and a printer-publisher on the second floor. It was on the second floor, above the dress shop and dry-goods stores, where in 1796 and 1797 the self-exiled aristocrat and future (and last) king of France, Louis Philippe, lived and taught French.
GULP
It took courage the first time I ate an oyster… and I remember it, as the saying goes, as if it were yesterday. I was eleven, and Alice, my godmother, invited me to spend the Christmas season school break with her and her husband in Strasbourg, where they were living at the time. Alice deserves a full treatment as she shaped my life in so many ways, but suffice it here to say she was a privileged woman from a bygone era of a type and class beyond my family’s and was quite a character. Spoiled by her father… then by her husband… and charmingly oblivious to it all.
A gorgeous blonde with blue eyes, she was fairly well educated for her time (though no college for her) via private tutors and exposure to all sorts of activities only the rich could afford. Her widowed father never remarried and spent lots of his time and energy as well as money to ensure that his only daughter got the best life could offer, especially during the rough times in between the two World Wars when she was growing up. She was both a gourmet and a gourmande. What mattered most to her was food, fashion, friends, reading, music, gardening, and traveling… and her husband, whose practice as an engineer took them to various cities in France for extended periods.
As a young girl, I loved spending time with Alice, my fairy of a godmother who had no children of her own. The first oyster experience was followed by many repeat performances during winter Sundays in Strasbourg, usually starting around the vacances de la Toussaint (All Saints’ Day) and ending at the close of Easter vacation, the perfect period for oysters. Alice and her husband lived in a cozy apartment filled with light in the old and charming part of town. The pleasant half-hour walk to the center offered a true picture of Alsace with its old houses and stork nests as well as the typical architecture that featured facade windowsills filled with ever-sturdy red-and-pink geraniums. The two of us would go on our morning walk to the cathedral and then buy dessert at the local patisserie while her husband was home cooking. He’d welcome us with the sound of a cork popping and a neatly set table with a white linen tablecloth and a huge platter of oysters (huîtres is the word in French, pronounced “weetr”) he had shucked.
I was always experiencing new things with Alice, but What does one do with these little slimy things? I remember thinking the first time I saw them. So, as told by my mother, when in doubt, always watch the hostess: Alice looked at the oysters with big wide eyes and a smile on her face. She put nothing on them, took the first one with a small fork, detached it from the nerve, and put it in her mouth. Another big smile. Happiness on her face. She then swallowed the juice without a word, looked at me, and said: “You are going to drink the salt of life… from the sea!” For someone who had never yet seen or drank the sea, my puzzled look said it all, but in a second of courage I tried… and wow. It was like nothing I had ever tasted—cool, briny, and almost voluptuously (not that I knew the word at the time) meaty on my tongue. Oh là là.
For that eleven-year-old girl, the dozen felt just fine, and that’s the portion I like to have to this day. Alice was a bit greedier. Her husband would prepare chicken paillard or veal scaloppine as a main course for the two of us, while Alice’s main course was a second dozen oysters. She claimed that Sunday lunch in the winter months was her favorite meal.
Régis, the male protagonist of this book (oysters are protandrous—sequential hermaphrodites going from male to female, and I, a mere woman, bear only XX chromosomes), had his first oyster when he was four or five at his home in Jarnac, in the heart of the Cognac region.
Love affairs and dreams can start early, and often go in a little box somewhere in our heads. Someday, years or decades later, they resurface. This is what happened to Régis. When his father first served oysters, little Régis did not care for their visual aspect. Icky. His father, like so many French fathers (or mothers), said, “Goûte, s’il te plait” (Please, taste), and he did taste. He so loved the “thing,” particularly the juice, that he kept asking his father, “When are you buying oysters?” They were not the food of farmers on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis! But the kid kept asking, and occasionally the treat would be on the dinner table. Mostly they were a Sunday treat.
A few years later, Régis and his friends would pick up the small oysters along the sea and waterways. They were wild ones, a bit like the very rare pousses en claires today. He recalls that as a teenager he was once in a nightclub in the lovely city of Royan in the Charente region, known for its seafront and corniche. His friend and his spouse, whose father was in the oyster business, were with him, and he said, “One day I’ll have an oyster place of my own.” Dreams do come true, and in forty years his did.
In 2004 he opened Huîtrerie Régis in the heart of Saint Germain-des-Prés, Paris sixth arrondissement. A life-changing decision: often eighteen-hour days, six days a week. No weekends. Passion a must.
His love of oysters is today almost an addiction or obsession. Now that his dream has come true, he eats them almost daily and claims to never tire of them and to be un gros mangeur (a big eater). He believes his love has to do with his childhood and love for the sea near where he lived. He finds it remarkable that oysters are a natural product of the sea and claims the magic of each oyster still fascinates him. He loves the texture of the oyster and the taste of the sea. He chides me if I leave the muscle (hard to remove with the oyster fork, and he recommends using a knife so not to leave it). Indeed, passion in abundance.
KISSING THE SEA
If in ancient times all roads led to Rome, it is very safe to say that for the past few hundred years, all French roads have led to Paris. And on those roads from the sea, oysters travel every day.
France is the number one consumer of oysters in Europe, and 90 percent of the production of European oysters comes from France: that’s about 130,000 tons, though in some recent years problems (natural and man-made) have caused production to fall to as low as 80,000 tons.
From the English Channel to the Méditerranée along the whole Atlantic coast, France equals oyster farming. From the north, Normandy, counterclockwise west to north and south Brittany, down to Charente-Maritime (Marennes-Oléron and Île de Ré), to the Arcachon basin near Bordeaux, and across to the Thau lagoon in the southwestern Languedoc-Roussillon region are the prime breeding grounds for France’s oysters.
The tastes are all different, though the variety of oysters is not. They are mostly (98 percent) cupped oysters, or creuses (pronounced “krØuz”), along with some flat ones, or plates (pronounced “platt”), mostly from Brittany. These two types, which I discuss in much more detail later, are the common types found the world over.
The breeding methods are many: in deep water, on tables or basins, and in estuaries. However, on more than 3,000 hectares (more than 7,000 acres) between the Seudre and the Oléron Island, oysters benefit from particular methods of affinage (aging, refining, finishing) and breeding in claires (clay basins). Located below the level of the highest tides, the basins fill and empty on the whim of the ocean. Since the basins are not deep, exposure to the sun allows for a quick growth of plankton, the oyster’s food.
The basins used to be salt marshes but have been progressively used for oyster breeding since the nineteenth century. It was Victor Coste at the time of Napoléon III and the Second Empire, who, at the behest of the ministry of agriculture, was asked to come up with consistent and sustainable production methods to meet consumer demands. He compared the methods for capturing and breeding oysters and became the founding father of modern oyster culture by creating the oyster farm system. He recognized the superiority of raising and cleansing oysters in basins and, through legislature, supported the concept of a collective group of basins being recognized as a farm.
The basin of Arcachon and Marennes-Oléron are the only two significant areas in France where oysters reproduce naturally. They provide the spats (oyster larvae) that are sent to many basins elsewhere in France. After having been “capted” on collecteurs (tubes), the oyster larvae develop for a year before they are detached to be put in beds, where the oysters will stay for two years. The basin passage gives the oysters their more pronounced goût du terroir in addition to the sea savor. Those oysters are also meatier.
While the deep-sea oysters of Normandy are marked by their iodized flavors, and those of Arcachon can be distinctively suggestive of vegetables and minerals or in places citrusy, the oysters of two areas generally stand out for reasons beyond just taste.
In Brittany, where most of the flat oysters are farmed, those from Cancale are famed and have been exported since Roman times. Here the oysters are subjected to some of the strongest and widest ranges of tides in the world and become richly oxygenated and salty and associated with iodized flavors. Even more famous are those from the Aven-Belon appellation (yes, oysters in France have regulated origins). These rare Belons (the species is Ostrea edulis) are matured in a site where the freshwater from streams and rivers mixes with seawater and the local algae. They are relatively small, plump, and firm and burst with bold flavors, notably metallic and earthy. Copper is a common flavor description, and Belons have a strong aftertaste of zinc. I appreciate that might not sound so appetizing, but trust their high prices as testament to their gastronomic delights.
The other standout appellation is Marennes-Oléron, which is France’s and the world’s most extensive oyster farming region. Here the oysters are cup shelled, originating in Japan (species Crassostrea gigas), and exhibit a range of briny flavors, from which each basin (claire) contributes its unique properties, in some cases even bluish-green dyed highlights from certain algae. The Gillardeau oysters, a brand named after the family that has owned and operated a small company for more than a century, for example, are today grown in Normandy and Ireland but finished in their traditional claires near where the Charente River meets the ocean. They are appreciated for their abundant flesh, modest salinity, near sweetness, nuttiness, and strong aftertaste.
These are the oysters that travel to the markets, bistros, and oyster bars of Paris. Parisians love their oysters.
My first restaurant experience of eating an oyster occurred in Paris when I was a young professional right out of college. It was at Brasserie Lipp. And it was on a date. Oysters and romance (read “sex”) have long been associated, as I noted earlier. Remember Botticelli’s naked Venus rising up on an oyster shell? Frenchmen and French culture just accept the legend of oysters as an aphrodisiac (believing so must mentally make it so?). And Brasserie Lipp has a few romantic atmospherics of its own. As you may know, it is the famous Left Bank Alsatian brasserie dating from the 1880s with a 1920s Art Nouveau interior that is now government protected to preserve the same look. So, physically, it is much the same as when Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre dined there regularly, the same as when Hemingway wrote there, the same as when I was “romanced” there, and the same as when, in the 1950s, Albert Camus, Jean Genet, Marc Chagall, Balthus, Françoise Sagan, Charles Trenet, and Simone Signoret with Yves Montand were among the artists, celebrities, and politicians who frequented the place. A dozen oysters, umm…
I was also frequently taken to La Coupole, where I remember best the oysters on the plateau de fruits de mer (a platter of assorted fresh and cooked shellfish). That I remember the seafood on a platter more than the guys who took me there surely says something about me… or maybe about them! La Coupole, another grand Art Deco palace, was also an artist hangout in its heyday… Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Brassaï, Albert Camus, Henry Miller, Josephine Baker… ate and drank there… oysters for sure. The fruits de mer platter made for a special date and always a special occasion—oysters, clams, shrimp, crabs, crayfish, lobsters, periwinkles, mussels, snails, sea urchins, all on a bed of ice on an enormous platter raised above the table. A little lemon, perhaps a mignonette sauce, some special cutlery, some good bread and butter, Champagne, beer, or white wine. It was a wonderful experience, in Paris or elsewhere, but for me it will always epitomize a slice of Paris. And many Parisians celebrate their joie de vivre at La Coupole and its sister bistros and brasseries. Early in our marriage, Edward and I celebrated a memorable New Year’s Eve there. It was indeed romantic—the Christmas and New Year’s colors and decorations, sybaritic oysters laid out like the sea, the Art Deco setting that brought us into a movie scene replayed for decades amid the Réveillon revelers and lovers; indeed, the smartly dressed diners all around us that evening kissing and laughing and kissing some more and enjoying the best of moments; the waiters running about in their black-and-white attire, and, of course, the sound of Champagne corks popping, popping, popping.
While oysters are raised and enjoyed all over the world, in Paris—ah, Paris—the oysters are oh so French. Previously mentioned Ernest Hemingway perhaps best captured in English the shared experience of eating a French oyster in Paris when he was living there in the 1920s: “As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture,” he wrote in a now-famous passage from A Moveable Feast, “and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
I have felt the same… in Paris at Le Dôme, the great and classic brasserie; at L’Ecailler du Bistrot; at Garnier; at the historic and touristy Le Procope; at Gérard Depardieu’s L’Ecaille de la Fontaine; at Brasserie Lipp and La Coupole; and at beaucoup de bistros and restaurants. And I have felt that way dozens and dozens of times (as in a dozen oysters dozens of times) at Huîtrerie Régis, the now supremely regarded little destination and just the place to lose that empty feeling and be happy.