OUVERTURE

You might not be able to see the world through an oyster shell, but if you press your nose up to the window of a tiny oyster shack of a restaurant in Paris’s Saint Germain-des-Prés area and view the dozen or so people feasting on platters of oysters and sipping wine, you can see Paris—the people, the passions, the culture, the Frenchness, the appetites (gastronomic and otherwise), the seductions, the fashion, the locals and the tourists, the banter, the drama—and feel the pulse of the city and its people. Welcome to Paris Oyster.

The place of the shelled bivalve in French culture and life underlines the difference between France and the rest of the world, and between Paris and other world capitals.

Where else on New Year’s Eve do you see crates of oysters being proffered one after another on the sidewalks and in the food stores? What other city has 250 restaurants serving oysters and 25 devoted to not much else? Where else do you find people excited to rapture over slurping slippery, gross-looking chunks of flesh down their gullets? Ummm… délicieux.

Oysters grow all over the world, and people the world over eat them. They have never been so broadly and readily available and diverse. It can be argued that they have never been so popular. Yet oysters in Paris are part of the French culture and identity… and the French are very patriotic in their types and accompaniments.

It is a pleasure to introduce you to a lovely enclave of Paris and share advice on how to open, eat, and learn to love oysters, perhaps enticing those of you who have not yet tried a raw oyster to take the leap and give this most nutritious of foods a try. I will also share some implicit and explicit cultural commentary and some of my thoughts regarding what France’s love affair with the oyster says about my native land. Taken together, braided, I hope these various elements come together into a work that indeed shows the world through an oyster shell in Paris.

This partial slice-of-life play, this comédie humaine, is about pleasure and celebrating life, about joie de vivre and art de vivre. Perhaps enjoy it with a glass of Champagne or Sancerre.