Pearls before swine

I find him standing there, dagger in hand, a trickle of blood dripping from his thumb to the floor.   His head is bowed, not in submission, but almost in expectation.   Of what?   The honour that is his due?   For what?   I must say,  it has been an epic battle, of Cap’n Ahab and Moby Dick proportions.   So what is he hoping for?    The Victoria Cross?   The Legion d’Honneur?   The Congressional Medal?

He drops to one knee, as if to be knighted for his bravery in …… opening a damned oyster!    I try to be kind, saying “arise Sir Gaz”, but he cannot for the dagger has fallen and anchored his trousers to the floor.

While he is there I begin to think about the whole subject of oysters   My personal opinion is that they are, along with most shellfish, the biggest marketing con in the world.

All that trouble to open them and you are presented with something which looks like a piece of rubber in mucous.   Officianados are “swallowers” or “biters”. Swallowers throw back their heads, open their throats and there goes the oyster, never touching a taste bud.   Biters have covered the oyster in shallot vinegar, Tabasco sauce, chorizo.    Anything to mask the taste.  Oh and then there’s “mind you don’t spill the ‘precious liquor’ from the shell”.    It’s sea water,  people.   You spill it, there are several large oceans to get spares from.

When a growing number of people began to suspect they were being fooled, new claims were made for these inedibles.  The strongest, still believed today, is that they are an aphrodisiac   No proof of this has been found.   And lord knows Gazzie keeps trying them out. And the chances of finding a pearl?   1 in 12,000.

Thinking of eating that many oysters reminds me of that other strange phenomenon, that other rite of passage amongst these shell food seekers.    Picture a seaside hotel breakfast room.  Person arrives tinged in green.    He has that look, the one that  says , ‘I’ve just survived the initiation ceremony to an exclusive club.’

“Up all night.  Sick as a dog.  Rogue oyster,” he says, with ill-concealed pride.  There are looks of even less well concealed jealousy in some other breakfasters.

In this lovely part of France it seems that nearly all restaurants sell “ coquillages” in some form.  The pretty seaside town of Mèze, for instance, has  maybe a dozen restaurants around the harbour which seem only to serve seafood.   It is worth noting that in the UK a dozen oysters costs the best part of £25.   Here they would cost about £10.   It is food (if you can call it such) for all, not for the few.   So no need for pretension.   When we visited Mèze,  on a sunny Sunday lunchtime in January,  most people were eating  oysters and mussels.   I can just about tolerate mussels in a garlic and cream sauce, but I eat with my eyes closed,  because when once I looked at what was in the shell, it appeared to me to be the chopped-off ear of a rather hairy gnome.

Whilst I would still, almost, rather take a 5 minute “W” word than eat an oyster, to please my husband and daughter we shall visit the Tarbouriech restaurant on the Étang du Thau near Marseillan.

It is in a beautiful position overlooking the bay and so successful, humane and environmentally-aware are the Tarbouriech family that their internationally awarded sea food has been named after them.   Tabouriech oysters are prized the world over, particularly the “Pink Diamond”.  Enough.    They are oysters still.