The Essential Oyster: A Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation

by Rowan Jacobsen

Overview

From Rowan Jacobsen, America’s go-to expert, the author of the trailblazing A Geography of Oysters, comes the ultimate oyster guide--a gorgeous, full-color, must-have book.

A decade ago, Rowan Jacobsen wrote a book called A Geography of Oysters that celebrated the romance of oysters, the primal rush of slurping a raw denizen of the sea, and the mysteries of molluscan terroir. The book struck a chord, and American oyster culture has been on a gravity-defying trajectory ever since.

With lavish four-color photos throughout by renowned photographer David Malosh, The Essential Oyster is the definitive book for oyster-lovers everywhere, featuring stunning portraits, tasting notes, and backstories of all the top oysters, as well as recipes from America’s top oyster chefs and a guide to the best oyster bars. Spotlighting more than a hundred of North America's greatest oysters--the unique, the historically significant, the flat-out yummiest--The Essential Oyster introduces the oyster culture and history of every region of North America, as well as overseas. There is no coastline from British Columbia to Baja, from New Iberia to New Brunswick, that isn’t producing great oysters. For the most part, these are deeper cupped, stronger shelled, finer flavored, and more stylish than their predecessors. Some have colorful stories to tell. Some have quirks. All have character. The Essential Oyster will help you find the best, and help you to cherish them better. That is what’s captured--and celebrated--in these pages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632862563
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	10/04/2016
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Rowan Jacobsen's first book on oysters, A Geography of Oysters, won the James Beard Award in 2007 and helped trigger the oyster mania we now find ourselves in. He is the author of Apples of Uncommon Character, Fruitless Fall, The Living Shore, and American Terroir. He has written for the New York Times, Harper's, Outside, Mother Jones, and others. He maintains the world's two leading web sources on oysters: Oysterguide (for his opinions) and Oysterater (for everybody else's). He lives in Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/06/2016
In the 10 years since Jacobsen’s first shellfish manifesto (A Geography of Oysters), oyster options on menus have expanded at a pace that rivals craft beers. There are now more than 300 varieties farmed or found along the waters of North America. Here, Jacobsen chooses 100 favorites, based on criteria such as historical significance and “flat-out yumminess,” creating an in-depth guide that is also a highly enjoyable read. For each object of desire there is a full-page color photo by David Malosh, and a list of five data points: the species (e.g., Pacific or eastern), how the oyster is cultivated, its physical appearance, its flavor, and its availability. For example, one of the newest delicacies is the murder point, an eastern oyster grown by Auburn University in five feet of water. They are “movie-star handsome” with a cream-of-potato soup flavor and will be produced at a rate of two million a year. Once all this data is dispatched, Jacobsen settles in with a few paragraphs of appreciation for each mollusk. Humorous, crafty, and deeply informative, these passages are the reason to read this book, instead of turning to one of the many oyster apps or websites. Of the Bar Harbor selection, Jacobsen writes that the shells have the “depth and strength of bottom-cultured oysters, but the beautiful purple swirls of bag-coddled bivalves.” A handful of recipes from top chefs round out the book, chased down with a dirty oyster-brine martini. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"A gastronomic inventory of America's oysters, meticulously distinguishing among the dozens of varieties that diners encounter . . . Jacobsen manages to illustrate the unique appearance, occurrence, shapes, colors, scents, and flavors of oysters hailing from each separate reef bordering American shores. He realizes all this through his exceptional command of language and his ability to resonate with the human passions of the oystermen he meets on his journeys from the Gulf of Maine to the Gulf of Mexico to Puget Sound. A remarkable, essential addition to any food collection." - starred review, Booklist

"With oysters looking and tasting completely different in every cove and bay, Rowan Jacobsen guides us through the array of choices with authority, verve, and charm. The Essential Oyster is a rare pearl." - Mark Kurlansky, author of COD and THE BIG OYSTER

"From dedicated oyster aficionado Rowan Jacobsen, a book for all the oyster lovers in the world! A wealth of fun and information." - Sandy Ingber, Executive Chef, Grand Central Oyster Bar

"Rowan Jacobsen is one of the best writers reporting on, and thinking about, food today. Period." - Michael Ruhlman, author of THE SOUL OF A CHEF and RATIO

"[A] verbally and visually succulent book . . . Jacobsen may leave noncoastal readers drooling with jealousy, but vicarious oyster slurping is better than none." - Kirkus Reviews

"A dazzling book about the best bivalves of our time . . . Rowan Jacobsen is to oysters what a sommelier is to wine--minus the pretense . . . There are more than 300 different oysters in North America, and in Mr. Jacobsen we have an expert guide." - Wall Street Journal

"No matter how well you may know a subject, when Rowan Jacobsen writes about it you’ll find illuminating and fascinating new information. Luckily for us, oysters are one of his specialties." - Seattle Times

"Chart[s] the oyster’s resounding comeback and provide guidance to diners facing down an embarrassment of bivalves. - The Wall Street Journal

"You’ll find everything you ever wanted to know about oysters in Rowan Jacobsen’s new book, ‘The Essential Oyster: A Salty Appreciation of Taste and Temptation.’ - New London Day

"If you've ever wanted a story to leap off the page of a book, this is that book . . . Rowan Jacobsen, who has written not one, but two acclaimed, encyclopedic books about oysters, the industry and where to find the best ones, is helping that dream come true." - Miami Herald

"Jacobsen sets the stage for savoring oysters and oyster culture . . . A true shellfish manifesto, celebrating the romance of oysters, the primal rush of slurping a raw denizen of the sea, and guiding readers and eaters alike to shucking stations with a bit of knowledge and the desire to try something new." - Napa Valley Register

"[H]ere are the Winesap, the Pound Sweet, the Maiden’s Blush and Black Twig, rendered in a vivid prose rarely seen outside of the wine list . . . For anyone who’s willing to get swept up in the grand romance of food, this handsome volume will make for seductive reading." - Morning Edition, NPR, on APPLES OF UNCOMMON CHARACTER

"One of the most remarkable single-subject books to come along in a while . . . Jacobsen covers oysters in exhaustive detail, but with writing so engaging and sprightly that reading about the briny darlings is almost as compulsive as eating them . . . There may be no more pleasurable food than a raw oyster, there almost certainly is no better guide." - Los Angeles Times on A GEOGRAPHY OF OYSTERS

"Written in an accessible style by a hard-core ostreaphile, A Geography of Oysters is a fun read, inviting you to join Jacobsen on his quest for an oyster-rich life. Yes, please!" - Washington Post on A GEOGRAPHY OF OYSTERS

"The most gripping aspect of James Beard Award winner Rowan Jacobsen's Apples of Uncommon Character is the author’s loving, quirky, and so-vivid-it’s-like-you’re-eating-one-right-now descriptions of 123 different apples." - Bon Appetit on APPLES OF UNCOMMON CHARACTER

From the Publisher

2016-07-26
This verbally and visually succulent book covers 99 types of oysters, most from the shores of North America.Ten years after A Geography of Oysters, James Beard Award–winning author Jacobsen (Apples of Uncommon Character, 2014, etc.) chronicles his travels from British Columbia down to Seattle, across the Gulf Coast, and from North Carolina up to Nova Scotia, with detours to Ireland, France, and New Zealand. There may be, as he notes, only five widely distributed species of edible oysters, but the look and taste of these species vary widely based on the “merroir” (the marine equivalent of “terroir”) in which they grow up and the way that they are treated as they grow. The author’s appreciation of even the least prepossessing of these bivalves is infectious. Jacobsen makes the case that “every oyster is a tide pool in miniature, a poem built of salt water and phytoplankton that nods to whatever motes of meaning shaped it.” The lavishly illustrated volume consists of mini-essays on the geography and people of the regions in which oysters grow wild or are farmed—Jacobsen favors the carefully farmed varieties—and two-page spreads on each of the types he features, as well as a few carefully culled recipes, a list of oyster bars at which he has enjoyed his subjects, and a glossary of terms like “flupsy” and “pluff mud.” Each of the entries covers species, cultivation, obtainability, flavor, and “presence.” The latter two are where the author lets his imagination soar: East Beach Blondes, farmed in Rhode Island, taste like “brine and ozone; a boardwalk in the rain”; Maine’s wild-harvested Belons remind him of “hazelnuts and anchovies fried in seal fat, with a squishy crunch like jellyfish salad.” In terms of presence, New Brunswick’s Beausoleils are “as clean and inoffensive as a Jehovah’s Witness,” and wild James River specimens have “oversized muscles and a pale potbelly, like an aging professional wrestler.” Jacobsen may leave noncoastal readers drooling with jealousy, but vicarious oyster slurping is better than none.

Kirkus Review