Shuckers ready? Suckers puckered? Grab an oyster. Loosen those jaws... GO!
It's not a competition for the clumsy or those with a delicate constitution
C'mon! Get your shuck on!
We were in New York late last month to attend the
NYC Food Film Festival which spanned for 5 days, each day with a theme of its own. Opening night, it was oysters! As part of the opening night festivities, 5 shuckers and 5 suckers went head to head for the first ever
New York Suck and Shuck competition. Tag-teams of two have to shuck and suck 2 dozen oysters each. The fastest wins. At the end of the competition bloody towels attest to how accident-prone this contest was. Shucking blades can slip in the heat of the moment and slice off fingers. Suckers impatient to swallow down oysters get their lips cut on the jagged edges of the shell. It was mayhem. Best of all, the audience gets to eat as many oysters until their lips shrivel like prunes...
Winners "Eddie Oyster" and Jimmy Carbone with their 'bloody' towel.
The competitors were a pedigreed lot. Among the contestants were Chuck from Chuck's Day Off who shucked while a Vanity Fair blogger sucked and Brad Farmerie of Southeast Asian inspired restaurant
Double Crown. That night, over 6,500 oysters were consumed by probably about 300 people. I guess New Yorkers love their oysters! I probably ate more than a dozen- little, sweet ones, large briny ones and those that taste like open spaces and the clean sea.
And I like the fact that the oysters themselves have slightly suspect and dodgy names like Fanny Bay and Widow's Hole.
Films that night were all about bivalve lurve.
Widow's Hole oysters also the subject of a film of the same name is about Mike Osinki whose Long Island oyster farming is a far cry from his Wall Street roots. Evidently cultivating oysters is a simpler and more fulfilling life.
When watching food movies you realise that eventhough food is well the whole point of it, it's really the characters whose lives orbits around their food obsessions that makes the best movies. In
The Perfect Oyster, Brent Petkau oyster grower on the windy shores of British Columbia waxes lyrical with a Boogie Nights soundtrack in the background. Yeah baby...
Crusty and jagged on the outside but ooo so tender and slurpy on the inside...
The venue
Water Taxi beach at Seaport with the Manhattan skyline couldn't be a better venue. The weather was perfect, a warm-ish summer evening with cool breezes. Between the shucking and the films, a bluegrass band entertains. It's great to finally be here amongst fellow foodies, sand (albeit artificial) between my toes, oysters in my mouth and groovy films about them on the screen. As Mr. Petkau said while sucking his briny morsels, "the oyster is the ultimate social food," sitting here with 200 new-found friends, I couldn't agree more.
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