My kingdom for a Croatian oyster!

On a lark, I tried to recreate my Croatia oyster experience last night at Aquagrill in New York. I was downtown, walking across Spring Street at close to 10pm and thought, oyster season! Aquagrill!

I sat at the bar, ordered a Chablis and asked the server to select six different oysters for me. They were all tasty – the one from Duxbury, Mass. was the sweetest and plumpest – but they did not sing the song of the ancient seas. They were extremely fresh but lacked the brine and saltiness of my Dubrovnik darlings. I wanted more and I think they did, too. I just put in a call to inquire about shucking techniques and whether there is a cleansing process that includes diluting the liquor.

I also ordered the Maine sea urchin. Again, good but not great. It didn’t taste like the rich sea essence is often does at a sushi restaurant. The meat came in its shell perched on ice with a sad little seaweed arrangement. No garnish would have been better. And for some reason, the sauce that accompanied this delicacy – a ponzu with scallions – comes in a large metal gravy boat. It’s definitely on the tacky side and from a practical standpoint, it’s difficult to control the pour and who on earth needs eight tablespoons of sauce for one tiny little urchin? It should come with an eye dropper instead.

Here are some Adriatic urchins off of Cavtat, near Dubrovnik. We saw these spiky guys all over, except on restaurant menus. I’ll have to look into that at some point. Maybe the water is too warm.

The service at Aquagrill was friendly and generous. When a few fruit flies were harassing me, the manager suggested I move further down stream, toward the raw bar. I ended up chatting in French with a lovely oyster shucker from Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso in West Africa. He said he’s never eaten an oyster and that he’s allergic to shellfish. I guess if you don’t know what you’re missing, it’s not so bad to be ensconced in oysters all day, but lord, I would crumple if I ever developed an oyster allergy.