Please, oyster eaters, tell me where you typically buy them, what you are looking for, and what you avoid.
When I was a kid in Rhode Island I used to dig up tons of shellfish, crack them open on a rock and eat them as-is. I had a few recently and realized how much I like them.
The Maine Avenue Fish Market. I just have the vendor pick out a dozen for me.
What DCnDC said. I always called it “the wharf” though.
If I want really big oysters, I look for them at Cost Cutter (a local chain). If I’m looking for smaller ones, I go to The Market or Fred Meyer. If I’m looking for variety, I go to one or more vendors at Pike Place.
Theoretically, I could buy a license and get them (and clams) out of the bay where I live.
I lived my first 46 years in Baltimore. When I wanted a dozen or two, I always lived within a mile of a seafood shop where I could buy fresh Chesapeake oysters. If I needed more than a couple of dozen, I would go to the wholesale seafood market outside of town and by them by the peck. The vendors at the wholesale market had oysters from all along the east coast.
Now that I live in Ohio, I eat oysters only at restaurants. In Columbus, there’s the Columbus Fish Marketand The Pearl. In southern Ohio, where I live and where I never expected to get fresh seafood, there’s a restaurant called The Grand Tavernthat does, in fact, have fresh seafood. The owner works on the east coast and drives to Ohio once a week with a truck full of great stuff.
As for what I look for or avoid, oysters seem pretty inscrutable to me. I look for a vendor or a restaurant that is busy, knowledgeable about seafood, and where the salesperson or server knows the details on the origin and freshness of what they are selling.
In Chicago if I’m eating them out I go to Shaw’s when I downtown or Poor Phil’s closer to home.
If I’m buying them to have at home I go to H Mart - pristine seafood at good prices.
All over the place around here (Rhode Island of course). I don’t dig my own, but I can get them at the grocery, several seafood distributors, or from a couple of people who do dig their own. Any seafood distributer should be able to get them for you, oysters are huge business everywhere. They get shipped everywhere from any location where they are grown. They’re almost all farmed now and the transplanted variety for farming choke out the local varieties.
I live in a small town on the Eastern Shore of MD, and buy oysters by the bushel (or fraction of a bushel) from any of several local seafood stores.