I was hesitant to try raw oysters but my wife convinced me to try one and I loved them immediately.
ACME Oyster House in New Orleans does a char-broiled oyster that’s out of this world too.
Raw oysters with a few drops of Tabasco may be my favorite food on earth.
Perhaps your ancestors ate oysters…
Yep. You dont want to pulverize them but a few gentle chews really brings out the flavor. Man I need to get over to Poor Phil’s.
I don’t like raw oysters.
Oysters Rockafellar (sp?) however are another story entirely - I could go through a dozen of them without even thinking about it. They are delicious.
I wouldn’t recommend trying them on a cruise unless you’re willing to be really open-minded and try them again someday if they suck the first time.
Hurl potential could be higher on a ship.
Agreed. Plus you want to go to someone you REALLY trust. Raw oysters must be pristine. Ain’t no sick in the WORLD like a bad shellfish sick.
First raw oyster I ever had was the size of a man’s fist and I tried to swallow it without chewing. It got halfway down and then came back up again. Luckily nobody else at the dinner saw, so I choked it down a second time and vowed never again.
Then I was persuaded to try a fresh Galway Bay oyster, small and jewel-like, with a drop of Tabasco and a squeeze of lemon juice, and I was instantly hooked.
Like the others say, don’t try to swallow it whole - that’s just a waste. Chew a couple of times to release the flavor of the sea before swallowing it down.
Then you’ll want another one and not quite know why. It’s the food equivalent of cocaine.
Agreed. I ate a dozen one evening, and only nine of them worked. :D:D
I loved them from my first try. Count me among the “couple of chews” crowd. I like having a few plain, a few with tobasco, a few with horseradish, a few with cocktail sauce, etc. How I miss the Dearborn Street Oyster Bar!
If a naive beginner tried to eat a big honking oyster “the size of a man’s fist”, he might very well be put off for life. Oysters that size are meant for cooking: oyster stew or breaded and fried. They have a flabby unappealing texture when raw.
Oysters meant for eating raw ought to be small and jewel-like, as jjimm says. They have a tender chew and a flavor like fresh, wide-open ocean. I never understood the “slimy” description; I think they have a tender bite like delicate fresh pasta. I like them with a drop of lemon or mignonette only. And I only recently discovered that Guinness does indeed go very well with oysters. (See: the oyster-eating scene in the movie Topsy Turvy.)
Mignonette is finely diced shallot, red wine vinegar (preferably high-quality French), and cracked black pepper. Chilled in the fridge. Typically in northern France this is the only way oysters are served.
YUM, love them! I put a little wee bit of red seafood sauce on them while in the shell. The ones I get, usually at Boss Oyster in Apalachicola (on the Gulf, Florida panhandle) (go there if you are in the area), have just been opened. The oyster is still attached to the shell so has to be broken loose before slurping it down. It would be kind of anticlimactic to tip your head back and tip the shell into your mouth, and have the oyster stay put in the shell…
I’m fortunate to live in a state that prides itself on its seafood. There are places where you have a choice of oysters from over a dozen different areas. They’re all good, but some are better than others. Locally, most oysters tend to be served fried; but there are a couple of upscale places that have very nice oysters collected very close to them. Many (most?) people like to slurp them down (and chew them, of course) with the ‘liquor’. Personally I like the taste of the meat and prefer less of the liquid.
I don’t remember the first time I had a raw (live!) oyster, but it was probably the first time I had a raw clam. A pair of friends got married. It was just them, me (‘best man’) another friend (‘bridesmaid’), and the bride’s father. I picked up my first raw clam. Just as I got it in my mouth, the bridesmaid said, ‘It’s like phlegm, isn’t it!’ Thank you, Linda!
Oysters are a nice treat. Raw and freshly-shucked, or deep fried and eaten alone or as a po’boy, I like them.
I hadn’t even considered this. I have never been nauseous on a cruise, however, so that should work in my favor.
I suppose I should make the leap at a proper seafood establishment; the upside to trying them on a cruise, though, is that they are ‘free’.
Can a newbie tell by looking/smelling whether it’s a good oyster?
mmm
Never been on a cruise but I doubt they will risk their reputation by serving bad oysters (probably frozen until right before serving) that will get you sick (you could get sick from just the taste of oyster, if you’re not used to it, and/or the sensation of oyster going down your throat combined with motion sickness and/or hangover nausea…) but then again a lots of wacky news coming out of cruise ships these days…
Sorry. 
A good shucker will sever that for you, and a good restaurant will give you a special oyster fork that has an edge just for severing that muscle. You definitely want to slurp the whole thing at once.
You certainly can. A good oyster smells like the ocean and is fresh and plump and resting in full clear liquor. A bad oyster is immediately evident; toss it in the can.
I prefer raw (perhaps with a bit of lemon) over cooked and like Johnny LA, I am glad I live in the NW. I find that the aphrodisiac reputation is a bit oversold - only six of the last dozen worked for me…
Every fall/winter we get the ‘fresh’ oysters in and people buy them by the gallon for oyster stew. I don’t like them at all. Mom used to make the oyster stew and give Dad all the oysters and we would eat the milk ‘broth’ and I couldn’t stand that either. It still had that flavor. Yuck.
Then a couple years ago, I took a trip down to the Gulf Coast and, never having had fresh, fresh seafood like they have down there, I tried fried oysters as part of a combo plate. I still couldn’t stand them. Luckily they only gave me two and I did eat one.
I like them on a saltine with some cocktail sauce or horseradish, but it is absolutely possible to eat too many of them. There is no grosser feeling than having over-eaten oysters and drank too much beer. Remember what happened to Roger Sterling after that lunch.