Guide to Oysters

Pacific oysters are small and sweet and the world's most cultivated oyster. They are growing in popularity in both Europe and the West Coast, where they are starting to over-run the native Olympia (below). Pacific oysters used to be used to describe all small Pacific oysters like Kumamotos and Miyagis. Kumamotos, however, were found to be their own species (below). Pacifics have a distinctly more fluted, sharply pointed shell than Atlantics or European flats.

Today Pacifics are usually named after where they are grown, such as Totten Inlet and Fanny Bay, but some are trade names such as the justly well-known Sweetwater oyster from Hog Island Oyster Company.

Kumamotos are small, sweet, almost nutty oysters characterized by their deep, almost bowl-shaped shell. Like Pacifics, they have deeply fluted, sharp, pointy shells. They spawn later and in warmer water than other oysters, so they remain firm and sweet well into summer months. Kumamotos are widely cultivated in Japan and the West Coast. The name Kumamoto is so valued that Kumamotos are always labeled as such, although some places will also specify where they are from.

Kumamotos used to be lumped in with Pacific oysters, but it ends up they are their very own species.

Many people are shocked to learn that Bluepoints and Wellfleets, Malpeques and Beausoleils are all Crassostrea virginicas, as are some 85% of oysters harvested in the U.S. (including most of those in the Gulf of Mexico).

True bluepoints are raised in Long Island's Great South Bay where they were first found. Today "bluepoint oyster" is often used as a general term for any Atlantic oyster served on the half-shell (i.e. "New Jersey bluepoints" and "Virginia bluepoints"), which, if you know they are all the same species anyway, is amusingly absurd.

Wellfleet oysters are grown in Wellfleet Harbor in the northeastern part of Cape Cod. Enthusiasts correctly detect many differences between oysters grown in different parts of the harbor.