Briny Vastness « nom.nom.nom

Briny Vastness

17Apr08

Oysters are important–they taste like the ocean, like the dumb mouths of fish going open, close, open, close, and sand in my sheets at night. They taste like a briny vastness, like sex and fresh air. The first time I had oysters on the half shell was when I was seventeen years old and in New Orleans for the first time. It was at Felix’s Oyster Bar on the corner of Bourbon and Iberville, and the sun was sharp and golden in that early September kind of way. A broad black man with one gold tooth mixed a special cocktail sauce in a white paper dixie cup. It consisted of ketchup, horseradish, bourbon, Tabasco, Crystal hot sauce, salt, and pepper–and all of it piled on slick oyster flesh atop a saltine cracker. It made my nose water and my eyes burn, like any good cocktail sauce should, and I washed it all down with Mexican beer and lime. New Orleans, which I called home for four years, and oysters are inextricably intertwined for me, and I am as enamored with oysters as I remain enamored with New Orleans, which still feels like home in a way. Oysters, like New Orleans, are visceral and raw (at least they should be unless we are talking po-boys or Rockefeller). Something about the bed of crushed ice that the misshapen shells sit on, the tiny oyster forks, mixing my own hot sauce, the crinkle of cellophane wrapped crackers, and the sea grit in my mouth makes me feel like I am participating in the universe.

When we aren’t feeling lazy E and I ride our bikes down the river walk to a place called “The Boat House” for oysters on the half shell, if we are lucky this is on a Monday, when the oysters are half price. It’s a pretty bourgie place, full of bud light drinkers and buttons ups, but they have a deck that looks out onto the sunset over the river and delicious, albeit diminutive, Bloody Marys. In addition to oysters and Bloody Mary’s they have the best grilled okra I have ever had the pleasure of eating. It’s no Felix’s, but the river almost almost makes up for the fact that it isn’t New Orleans.