A Shucking Good Time with Lost Coast Oyster Co.
If you’re like me, you adore a good oyster. Raw on the half shell, fried, chargrilled, you name it. Unless you’ve got a go-to restaurant for fresh oysters, they can be a real miss sometimes, especially when you just don’t know how fresh they are, whether they’ve been stored properly, etc.
Insert my obsession with Lost Coast Oyster Co. here. At a time when I was seriously missing freshly shucked oysters during the pandemic, I learned about this sustainable oyster farm (the Tampa Bay area’s first oyster farm, I should add) from a FOX 13 News segment that was playing in the background of my work-from-home day. I waited patiently for a harvesting week and immediately placed an order. Now, it’s hard to be impressed by a measly Gulf oyster when I’ve got these delicious, briny bivalves available to me.
Lost Coast Oyster Co. sells their “LoCos” in 25-, 50- and 100-count bags, and they are incredible. Simply order through their online shop and you’ll receive a confirmation email with instructions for pickup in St. Pete. I’ve ordered them on 3 or 4 separate occasions now, and pH calls them my “dealer,” which I guess wouldn’t be too far off from the truth, haha.
Before I started purchasing LoCos, I had zero experience with shucking oysters, so in preparation for my very first order, I watched some YouTube tutorials, bought an oyster knife and gloves off of Amazon, and the rest is history. It was actually very easy to catch onto, and it’s fun to play around with pairings! I went with the OG cocktail sauce and horseradish, of course, then got fancy with a sesame-soy vinaigrette with ginger and scallion, a spicy Korean vinaigrette with with chopped radish kimchi and a spicy miso butter. On weeks when the harvest yields some bigger oysters, I’ll whip up some simple cornmeal battered fried oysters with cocktail sauce for dipping. Whichever way you make them, they’re guaranteed to be delicious.
