If you love oysters (who doesn't?) and have fifty bucks at your disposal, your Saturday night plans are all settled. Come on down to the South Street Seaport, where the popular New Amsterdam Market is setting up what will hopefully be the first of many Oyster Saloons at the open-air (but covered) location. The fundraiser supports the seasonal market, which brings butchers, grocers, mongers, farmers and bakers together from across the tri-state region. For Saturday night's Saloon, they've recruited April Bloomfield of The John Dory Oyster Bar, Patrick Connolly of bobo restaurant, King Phojanakong of Kuma Inn, Luke’s Lobster, cask beers sourced by Beer Table, coffee & cake from Blue Bottle Coffee, music from the Silvester Manor Trio, and a whole lot more. Organizer Robert Lavalva gives us the scoop:
The Oyster Saloon revives the very local tradition of eating fresh-shucked raw oysters as well as classic preparations in the city's public market houses. Having a focus on the East Coast (with a few West Coast oysters for good measure) and serving cooked oysters makes this event fundamentally different than the the festivals at San Gennaro or on Stone Street.
We've been building relationships with a lot of small producers and oyster growers, many of which are one or two person operations that span from Maine to Virginia, and a few of these guys will be serving their product in New York for the first time. While this event is a fundraiser, it's also a way for us to introduce and test what will be an important element of a permanent New Amsterdam Market as we build our case for preserving and reinventing the old Fulton Fish Market.
And in other oyster news, the beloved Grand Central Oyster Bar, their oyster of the month this month is the Peconic Pearl from New York’s Long Island Sound. Priced at $2.35 per piece, part of the proceeds go to conservation of the estuaries of the Peconic Bay. These Peconic Pearls are actually a new brand of oysters grown by the Noank Aquaculture Cooperative at the Shellfisher Preserve in Southold, New York. Executive chef Sandy Ingber tells us, "Peconic Pearls are medium briny. The meat is tremendously full, and it’s a wonderful tasting oyster."
