CRU Oyster Bar Nantucket is renowned for its raw bar. The pristine quality and substantial selection of fresh oysters (our menu features eight to a dozen different varieties daily) and hard-shell clams are why CRU’s raw bar is considered the most expansive on the island. Beautifully displayed on beds of crushed ice, everything is expertly shucked to order (never in advance!), and impeccably served with a variety of handmade cocktail sauces and plump wedges of lemon.
Another signature offering at CRU, and unique to the Nantucket food scene: our lavish, chilled seafood towers overflowing with tiers of briny oysters and clams, crudos of local fish, Nantucket scallops on the half shell (when they are available for harvest), and tins of the world’s best caviars—hand selected in collaboration with Calvisius caviar.
To complete the raw bar menu, CRU offers a variety of chilled shellfish cocktails: blue crab, lobster, and wild-caught shrimp—all beautifully presented and accompanied by the perfect sauce.
Now, with the recipes in this chapter, you can create a memorable evening with your own raw bar. We recommend including a selection of cooked, chilled shellfish—shrimp, crab, or lobster—with the raw items. Crab claws, whole shrimp, or lobster tails halved down the center are delicious, easy choices. Or, you can re-create a couple of CRU’s signature seafood cocktails; check out the recipes that appear later in this chapter.
The sauces you’ll use with seafood cocktails are the same ones you’ll set out to accompany the raw oysters and clams on the half shell. This chapter gives you recipes for four delicious, simple-to-make but out-of-the-ordinary-tasting cocktail sauces, plus serving suggestions.
PREPARING YOUR RAW BAR
Ideally, you’ll have a partner helping you shuck. Place each shucked oyster or clam, as you go, immediately on a platter of crushed ice. In advance, set out lots of wedges of juicy lemons and dishes of two or more of CRU’s distinctive sauces so that as soon as the shucking is done you can wash your hands and serve.
CHEERS! THE BEST SPIRITS TO SERVE WITH YOUR RAW BAR DELICACIES
Our top pick for a white wine is Christian Moreau Chablis. We love its crisp, clean feel in the mouth, its mineral notes, and its acidity. Refreshing but possessing a complexity worthy of oysters on the half shell, this Chablis from a renowned vineyard in France is one of the reasons the wine list at CRU wins awards every year.
Another white wine we love, Clos Mireille (from Domaines Ott, a house that produces some of the world’s most prestigious wines, and a favorite of ours), will complement the ocean flavors of oysters and the other items at your raw bar. From its delicate, fruity nose of white peach and apricot mixed with passion fruit and mango to its fresh, crisp, full taste, this wine is a perfect match for the salinity and melon tones of our Fifth Bend Nantucket oysters.
For a rosé, Château de Selle (also a Domaines Ott wine) is crisp yet uniquely soft, with notes of citrus fruit and orchard flowers. This wine pairs beautifully with our award-winning Crab Cocktail.
A dry champagne, like Pol Roger, is another excellent accompaniment.
In addition to offering your guests wine or champagne, a classic gin martini with a lemon twist, icy cold, served straight-up, is a great choice. The distinct bite of gin and dry vermouth makes an excellent accompaniment to the delicate but rich flavors of oysters, clams, and seafood cocktails.
OUR TWO FAVORITE NANTUCKET OYSTER FARMERS: STEVE BENDER AND SIMON EDWARDES
At CRU, we serve two locally raised oysters: Pocomo Meadows oysters, grown by Steve Bender, and Fifth Bend oysters, grown by Simon Edwards. Pocomo Meadows oysters are grown in the mouth of Polpis Harbor, near two freshwater creeks, which lends a sweet mineral taste to them. Fifth Bends are grown in the head of Nantucket Harbor in deep water, giving them a wonderful briny flavor. Steve and Simon provide us with these exquisite oysters every day, for our entire CRU season. We consider their high-quality locally grown oysters to be the cornerstone of our raw bar.
MEET: STEVE BENDER—SCIENTIST, ENTREPRENEUR, AND OYSTER FARMER
Oyster farming is Steve Bender’s ninth career. A chemist by training, with degrees from Alfred, Columbia, and MIT, he has traveled the world including as an invited lecturer in Japan and Russia. Although he was raised in the Bronx, he has now lived on the island for enough years to call himself a longtime Nantucket resident.
Describing himself as “lucky,” he says he “happened to hit a couple of home runs in research,” which meant that in 1970 when a friend mentioned there was a restaurant for sale on Nantucket, Steve (who had never even visited the island) checked it out and bought it. He enjoyed the restaurant business but seven years later was ready to sell. He stayed on the island, though, had a boat built and went fishing for cod and tuna; during the winter, he often went scalloping.
The genesis of his start in oyster farming came about when he took a course in aquaculture offered by FEMA in the early 1980s. He was intrigued but, at that time, there were no places left to raise oysters on the island. In 2008, when the opportunity to purchase rights to farm oysters in the waters at the mouth of Polpis Harbor became available—which he had been actively pursuing for years—he jumped at it.
Steve farms sub-tidally in an eight-acre fresh and saltwater estuary, Pocomo Meadows, with his wife, Anna Lynn, and their son, Emil. It’s a seven-day-a-week job most of the year, and days are long, but he loves the work and wouldn’t trade it for anything. “The setting is gorgeous. The oysters are incredible.” Fans agree. Delicate but complex, with a distinct mineral flavor.
When he’s not farming, Steve is advocating for protection of Nantucket Harbor and the surrounding environment.
Steve’s favorite way to enjoy oysters? Raw, on the half shell. He notes that the flavor varies quite a bit throughout the season. To him, the oysters are most delicious during late spring/early summer, and all through the fall. For those who prefer oysters that have been cooked, Steve recommends oysters Rockefeller as the best way to go and will even share his recipe with you if you catch him in the off-season.
When asked if a background in chemistry comes in handy for an oyster farmer, Steve looks incredulous. “Chemistry comes in handy in everyday life!”
MEET: SIMON EDWARDES—WORLD TRAVELER, SCIENTIST, AND OYSTER FARMER
Although he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in aquaculture, Simon Edwards came to oyster farming via a circuitous route. Born and raised in Kenya, he attended university in England and Scotland, after which he lived and worked in Costa Rica for fourteen years. In 2004, he and his wife (a native New Englander) moved to Nantucket.
In 2011, he received the permits to farm oysters in an area he leases at the head of Nantucket Harbor, and found a “perfect occupation.” He loves “the freedom, being on the water, growing something, seeing things to completion—the whole thing.”
His season starts mid-April and ends in December. Like any kind of farming, it’s a seven-day-a-week job most of the year, and weather dictates what can be done as well as what must be done. During the summer months, he employs help and keeps a crew of up to four busy during the peak season.
There’s still plenty to do in the off-season. Besides spending more time with his wife and their three young children, there’s paperwork to attend to, articles to read about advances in oyster farming techniques, and “seed” must be ordered. Simon buys his seed from hatcheries in Maine. “They come overnight in this expensive little box,” he explains. “They’re so tiny. Two millimeters; that’s literally a pencil point.”
All the oysters Simon raises are sold on Nantucket. In addition to supplying CRU with fresh oysters daily, he sells to a fish market. But the Fifth Bends he raises are an exclusive to CRU. “The Fifth Bends are grown in the head of Nantucket Harbor in floating cages in deep water, which means plenty of food source. These oysters are plump, meaty and briny.”
