The Walrus and the Carpenter

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

--Through the Looking Glass

Oysters. These are our newest love affair.

I have eschewed oysters for years for many reasons:

• I tried a fried oyster before and it was terrible. It was fishy and slimy and awful. I'm pretty sure I gagged.
• Oysters look like the flu.
• Sand. (Bonus: Pearls!...?) *generally not eaten by people, I guess
• The work you have to put into them to even get the good stuff.
• Fried oyster take for.ev.er to chew. Like cud. 
• Note: Aphrodisiacs--unbridled love! This was intriguing but not enough to overcome the other points stacked against them.

Recently, we met up with a friend and his girlfriend at the lovely restaurant The Parish. This place...I sent my dad a message and told him "Next time you're in town, we're going here." His response: "Yes, we are!"  The cocktails are amazing and if you fancy something a bit mellower, they had Breakside Pale on tap or Abita(!) in bottles. I don't even remember the name of the drink I had, but it was bubbly and pomegranatey, and it went down waaaayyyy too fast.

The menu is a lovely twist on some classic Cajun and Southern food dishes--crawfish pie, etouffee, muffaletta, catfish. There are also some interesting items that do not appear on the online menu, like rabbit gumbo and frog loegs, and that I was, admittedly, too nervous about them to try:

As a friend asked: If you eat them, do you gain their powers? Like the speed of a rabbit?

 Next time, though, I'm the queen of hearts on this matter. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

What we did learn from this lovely visit was that we do, in fact, love raw oysters on the half shell. Since the friends were fairly new to the oyster thing, we let the very kind and helpful waiter give us a hand on the selection. We went with four different varieties, some farmed, some wild:  Yaquina Bay, Netarts, Olympias, and some kind from Maine, which were referred to as the Corvette of oysters. Each was its own unique take on the shelled delicacy, and delicacies they were.  Briny, slippery, topped with lemon juice and Tabasco, they were perfection. I could have skipped the softshell crab sandwich (also very good) and just eaten more oysters.

We fell so much in love, that when we made our stop for meat last week at the Flying Fish Co., we grabbed some Netarts to take home and shuck ourselves. Scott had that one figured out, luckily; I had no luck getting them open. The ones he took off my hands to open had bits of shell in them. Shucked, set out on ice, topped with lemon juice and Tabasco, and again, they were quite the toothsome morsels.

      "But answer came there none —

And this was scarcely odd, because

      They'd eaten every one."

 

We are converts.