Cuisine and Culture Converge in ‘The Joy of Oysters’

Despite true tales of shell mounds once overwhelming the streets of New York City, never before has oyster culture so enveloped the entire United States, where the briny bivalves can be enjoyed at restaurants both fancy and casual from coast to coast. Into this maritime milieu comes The Joy of Oysters: A Complete Guide to Sourcing, Shucking, Grilling, Broiling, and Frying, an engaging, colorful 200-page cookbook full of recipes but also vignettes on the history, science, customs, and personalities connected to the globe-spanning shellfish. 

“There are a handful of oyster books and they’re all really good, but they tend to be a bit more academic or focused on a specific region,” explains author Nils Bernstein, a longtime music industry executive who shifted into food and drink journalism about a decade ago. “A lot of the literature around oysters makes them more intimidating, so I thought that there was room for something that, whether you’re an expert or a novice, you could just be motivated to enjoy them, to shuck them, to cook them, to learn about them, and to take all that intimidation factor away.”

Originally from Seattle, where personal connections to the emerging grunge music scene led to jobs at Sub Pop and Matador records, Bernstein got into food writing while splitting his time in New York City and Mexico City, which became his primary residence during the pandemic. “I always worked in music, but my passion was food and drink,” said Bernstein, who is the food editor for Wine Enthusiast, where we met as colleagues a decade ago. “As I aged out of the music industry, I shifted over to food and drink as work, with music as my passion.” 

He is good friends with the Vapnek family of Santa Barbara, and visits here frequently, cooking an extensive menu of Mexican cuisine for a Fiesta party every August. “It’s always been somewhere I associate with really good seafood and food and drink in general,” said Bernstein. “It’s one of my favorite places to eat and drink in the country.”

Not exactly an oyster expert before doing the book, Bernstein knew enough to get the ball rolling. “Coming from Seattle, seafood is in my blood — I grew up plucking oysters off the beach because they were free,” said Bernstein, “But it’s not like I spent the last five years embedding myself in oyster farming. They are the real experts. I want to be more of a cheerleader than an expert.”

He credits the relative recent rise of those shellfish operations for the quality and quantity of oysters available today. “The fact that now you can be in Madison, Wisconsin and go to a casual place and have your picks of eight different oysters overnighted from around the country? It’s an incredible luxury, the selection and the quality we have now,” said Bernstein. “It’s really the result of oyster farming.” 

Unlike other types of aquaculture or even agriculture, which tend to have negative impacts depending on which resources they use, the growing of oysters is a winning formula on every front — they don’t require feeding, they clean up waterways, they don’t need much space, they’re loaded with minerals, and so forth. “With oyster farming, there isn’t a tradeoff,” said Bernstein. “It’s a net positive. It goes beyond sustainability and into restoration. It’s actually healing. On top of those benefits, you also have oyster farmers monitoring the quality of the size, the taste, and the texture. It’s great for the consumer.”

He was interested to discover that people used to enjoy much larger oysters than today. “Historically, people didn’t eat tiny oysters on the half shell — they were cooking them,” said Bernstein. “Palm-sized oysters used to be the norm.”

He wishes larger oysters were available, even though he knows the market prices are better for small ones. “I understand all the reasons why the farmers don’t want to spend more time growing oysters that are less valuable than pretty small ones, but I just really like larger oysters and would like to see them be more common,” he said. 

With nearly four dozen recipes — from oysters Rockefeller and po’boys to Korean oyster pancakes and Irish beef and oyster pie — The Joy of Oysters directly challenges readers to go beyond the half-shell. Bernstein suggested ordering freshly shucked oysters, packaged in their own liquor, and sent to your door overnight, which many oyster operations do. “If you order shucked oysters from a farm, it’s an incredible product that is fresh and ready to go,” he said. “They’re much easier than peeling and deveining shrimp. They’ve done the work for you. Just dredge it and fry it.”
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