aw, shucks

I almost for­got to tell you! I had anoth­er excel­lent oys­ter caper, and now a new favorite restau­rant, and one I am dying to try. And it all occurred in one of those slight­ly creepy con­flu­ences of events and cir­cum­stances that makes you think a High­er Pow­er is direct­ing your actions. OK, oys­ters are an odd vehi­cle to choose, but these High­er Pow­ers have their own ways of doing things.

It all start­ed yes­ter­day at the mar­ket, when I decid­ed I was in the mood for an oys­ter or two (or three, as it turned out). Now you know how mad I am about an oys­ter, cold and deli­cious­ly fresh, shucked for you that very moment and sprin­kled with a lit­tle shal­lot in vine­gar, a lit­tle lemon juice, a lit­tle Tabas­co. Even the occa­sion­al bit of shell that you swal­low along with it is yum­my (prob­a­bly a good source of cal­ci­um, you nev­er know). Well, I do feel loy­al to the Mal­don oys­ter peo­ple, at my dear lit­tle Maryle­bone farmer’s mar­ket, but they don’t do Bor­ough Mar­ket, and des­per­ate times call for, well, you know. So I ambled over to a gor­geous lit­tle store­front, the Wright Broth­ers Oys­ter and Porter House as you see, adja­cent to the mar­ket, and there was a spe­cial, on some­thing called a “spe­ciale Claire,” a lit­tle oys­ter from the south­west coast of France, it turns out. I have clev­er­ly had this web­site page trans­lat­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly from the orig­i­nal French, and it makes for some pret­ty fun­ny read­ing, but you’ll get the idea. Any­way, they were small, sub­tle and total­ly fresh. I was feel­ing pret­ty dis­loy­al to my fish­mon­ger, but I decid­ed it’s all in the name of new expe­ri­ences. Share the wealth, and all that, dontcha know. Plus, it’s not a fish­mon­ger, it’s a restau­rant, and a very beau­ti­ful one, too. All the doors were wide open and there were tall ornate mul­ti-tiered can­dle­sticks with lots of roman­tic drip­ping wax, and wait­ers tak­ing round gor­geous smelling plates of food, as the lit­tle oys­ter man hung about on the pave­ment feed­ing all us mul­ti­tudes. I just know it will be my favorite new place, and I’ve got John booked for a lun­cheon date on Tues­day. Yum yum.

So I came home and waxed lyri­cal about the lit­tle gems to John, to make him realise what he’d missed by skip­ping out on me. Then we went out to return a library book at the lit­tle Mount Street branch, and whilst divert­ing our­selves with peeks into posh shop win­dows, came across a very com­pelling restau­rant facade with a very deli­cious and incred­i­bly expen­sive menu post­ed out­side, and there were “spe­ciale Claire” oys­ters, of all things! It’s called Scot­t’s of May­fair and while we can nev­er afford to go there, it made sense that an old-fash­ioned (but new­ly redone) oys­ter bar would have the flavour of the month, as it were. Well, I decid­ed to do a lit­tle research on the oys­ter, and the pur­vey­or, and who do you sup­pose pur­veys oys­ters to Scot­t’s? Yep, Wright Broth­ers. Isn’t that fun­ny! Yes­ter­day I would­n’t have heard of either place, and now I feel as if I’ve made new friends.

I’ve also heard about a great Lon­don food expe­ri­ence com­ing in June, the Taste of Lon­don 2007. Wright Broth­ers will be par­tic­i­pat­ing, and it will be a nice reminder of my old stomp­ing grounds, doing the graph­ic design for the restau­rants at Taste of Tribeca. I’ll be sure to report back. As well, in my strange­ly food­ie week­end, I picked up a brochure for a cook­ery (as they say here, not “cook­ing”) school, called “eat drink talk.” I’d love to take a cook­ery course, and there are so many to choose from: Approach­able Parisian Bistro, Styl­ish Sun­day Brunch, Gas­trop­ub Cook­ing, the list goes on.

Right now, though, I’m off to make spaghet­ti with a creamy, gar­licky, lemo­ny sauce, stud­ded with aspara­gus spears and bite-size bits of gam­mon steak. I’d give you the recipe, but I don’t know it yet! I think I make it dif­fer­ent­ly every time, but this time I’ll pay atten­tion and let you know.