The Oysters of Apalachicola

Fried, on the half shell, with a slice of fresh ginger mignonette and shaved Gala apples, or in a tasty stew, these mollusks are among the best around.

by John T. Edge
photography by Ted Tucker

On the glassine waters of Big Bayou, just to the west of Apalachicola on Florida’s Forgotten Coast, an oyster skiff sways. The wind blows from west to east this morning. With each gust, the skiff—a flat-bottomed two-seater once painted blue, now bleached gray—rolls softly, pitches slightly.

Viewed from the shore, say from the dock of Buddy Ward & Sons Seafood near Indian Pass, the skiff appears a mirage, a vestige of another era. But motor alongside, and you will find the husband-and-wife team of Charles and Mary Green at work. The forty-somethings drive from Panama City each morning to tong oysters from these waters.

They are not players in a living-history pageant; they are fisherfolk. Working like their forebears, they plunge ten- and twelve-foot wooden tongs into the brackish bay, scissoring baskets as the tips of the tongs open and close, capturing the mollusks that cluster along the bottom. And then—mustering upper-body strength of which mere mortals dream—they swing those tongs aboard, releasing a clatter of shells onto the wooden cull board that lies across the prow.

The Greens cull oysters measuring less than three inches in length and return them to the depths for another season or two of growth. The big ones will be off-loaded at Buddy Ward & Sons, arguably the premier oyster house in these parts.

The Family Business
Buddy Ward retired a few years back. His son Tommy—one of five brothers who have worked these waters—is now at the helm of the cinder-block building at the heart of the family’s wholesale seafood business.

Tommy is a big man with a gentle demeanor. He’s a steward of the circa-1930 family enterprise, a curator of  local maritime history, and an unapologetic booster for Apalachicola oysters. Look into his eyes, listen to his raspy voice, and you’ll know he speaks the truth when he says, “I’ve been out to Oregon, to Washington State, and California. I’ll put my bay, my water, my oyster up against anybody’s. No contest.”

Tommy manages a ragtag coterie of oyster catchers. Some, like the Greens—and a fellow who works a green skiff  blazoned with the slogan “Old Goat”—tong for bivalves in public waters. But others like Joey, Tommy’s brother, work the family’s leased oyster beds, piloting a cultivator machine that, while spinning round and round like some marine incarnation of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, scoops oysters from the bottom without need for tong plunges. Together, the two methods yield nearly two million pounds of Apalachicola oysters annually, a bounty that translates to 10 percent of the oysters harvested in the United States.

No matter the manner in which the oysters make it from the depths to the dock, Tommy is the man who sees that they make it from the dock to the tables. Truth be told, oysters from Apalachicola end up in some of the country’s best seafood houses. The reach of their fame sweeps the Gulf of Mexico and extends north, up the Atlantic coast. But even devouring a grand plateau de fruits de mer in a temple of culinary pursuit such as the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York’s Grand Central Station can’t match eating a dozen at a cinder-block joint in Apalachicola. Here, the commute from water to table is but thirteen miles on a lonesome bayside blacktop flushed with palmettos, shaded by pines.

Meet James Hicks
Snag a stool at Papa Joe’s, a beloved workingman’s bar and restaurant at Scipio Creek Marina in Apalachicola, and James Hicks gladly will shuck you a dozen, or three. He was born out near Tommy’s dock and shuck house. This is a place some people know as 13 Mile, and others—in homage to Tommy’s mother, Martha Pearl, and her cousin Fannie Pearl—know as, you guessed it, Pearl City.

James is a garrulous man, pushing seventy. He’s worked the water most of his life. It’s a family tradition. His wife, Oddys, arrives at three each weekday morning to shuck gallons for Tommy’s operation at 13 Mile. And James is quick on the draw. His blade work is clean, his oysters always free of effluvium. To sit at Papa Joe’s shellacked wooden bar and work your way through a tray of  Tommy-harvested, James-shucked raw oysters is to taste the briny distillation of the bay.

Oyster Options
The pleasures of Apalachicola aren’t confined to trays of half shells. At Tamara’s Café Floridita, they dish a creamy oyster stew, filled with chunks of sweet onions and floating with Tommy’s oysters. At Avenue Sea in Gibson Inn, David Carrier rests a trio of Tommy’s finest on a bed of shaved ice and garnishes them with ginger mignonette and shaved Gala apples.

But as any oyster lover knows, the fried oyster is the omega to the half-shell alpha. The best may well be dished by Cassie Gary of the Owl Cafe. Gary buys shucked oysters from Tommy, always asking for the selects. She tries to let the oysters be—merely dusting them with flour, dipping them in half-and-half, and rolling them in house-baked Italian breadcrumbs. Fresh from the deep fryer, served on a plate puddled with Dijon horseradish, these bivalves are raspy on the outside and creamy within.
In other words, they’re perfect.

Bivalve Intelligence
Prevailing wisdom holds that oysters should be eaten in the “R” months—September, October, November, December, January, February, March, and April. There’s some truth to that adage. Oysters harvested from cold waters in cold months are less likely to bear bacteria harmful to people with liver diseases and compromised immune systems. If this is an issue for you, eat your oysters cooked (fried, stewed, baked), and all worries recede, no matter the month.

For those of us who have the all-clear to eat raw oysters year-round, you should know that Apalachicola folks work with a unique lexicon. Calling oysters harvested in hot weather from warmer waters “poor,” they mean those oysters are less plump, less meaty, and don’t meet Apalachicola standards. Although, owing to the supremacy of the local product, all Apalachicola oysters might well be considered “rich” most anywhere else.

Apalachicola Bay is cordoned from the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico by the necklace strand of St. Vincent, St. George, and Dog islands. And the bay is bisected by the freshwater-bearing Apalachicola River. So, depending on the way the wind is blowing, either the bay is taking on salt water through the passes that cut the islands or it’s taking on freshwater by way of the river.

Since oysters are incredibly efficient filterers of water, their character is always in flux. A salt-bearing west wind means “salty” oysters will likely arrive on the docks at 13 Mile (Tommy Ward’s dock and shuck house). East-wind oysters will probably arrive “fresh,” which, in local parlance, has nothing to do with time elapsed from water to the bar, and everything to do with oysters that lack a briny punch.

If all of this mollusk talk makes your head spin, just ask the shucker whether the oysters are fresh or salty. If they’re salty, spritz on a little lemon juice and slurp them straight from the shell. If they’re fresh, you might want to reach for the Tabasco or maybe some cocktail sauce. And then lay that quivering beauty down on a saltine cracker and savor the essence of Apalachicola.