A different kind of oyster cult.
Shucked Olympia oysters on bladderwrack seaweed. [Photographs: Jennifer Burns Bright]
A diminutive creature that grows much more slowly than the robust, wavy-shelled Pacific, the Olympia oyster hides inside a tiny, flat teardrop of a shell, its meat on the pink side of beige. It grows only to about two inches, the nugget inside the size of a nickel. All of those Olys were served raw on the half-shell and in a variety of cooked preparations, perhaps most famously in the Hangtown Fry, a legendary scramble of eggs cooked with oysters and bacon that made its mark on the mid-19th-century San Franciscan food scene and endures as one of the city's earliest signature dishes.
At the same time, an unusual feature of the Olympia’s life cycle makes it uniquely suited to absorb the stresses of climate change. Dr. George Waldbusser, an ocean ecology expert at Oregon State University, explains that while most oysters release their eggs and sperm into the water for fertilization and development, Olympia females hold the fertilized eggs internally for over a week.
Dame Restaurant in Portland confidently offers no other oyster but the raw Olympia on its PNW-seafood-centric menu, allowing guests to experience the flavor prized by Kyle Christy."If we can have a conversation about it," owner and GM Jane Smith says,"we can tell customers that Olys are tiny, but the flavor is singular and wonderful, and they’re native to the coast and represent the restoration of the land and water that’s possible. Some are really into it.
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