Locavore Adventures: One Chef's Slow Food Journey

Chapter 3. The Delaware Bay Oyster

The Delaware Bay Oyster I’m speeding along a two-lane road in rural New Jersey, craning my neck for a glimpse of a bald eagle on the wing. The wetlands are lush with spring rains and teeming with eagles, cranes, and foxes. This wild and beautiful country would likely be a surprise to most Americans, who, thanks to generations of gangster films and late-night comedians, tend to think of New Jersey as a gritty urban pressure cooker.Yet the state is home to hundreds of farms tucked among rolling hills. Believe me, there’s nothing ironic about our official moniker, “the Garden State.” New Jersey once supplied produce and farm goods to the entire Northeast. Today we’ve gone a step further: now we also supply food to the world. On this day I’m hunting for one of New Jersey’s lost treasures—the state’s once-commanding oyster industry. When Henry Hudson and his band of explorers arrived in the region in 1609, they looked out at 350 square miles of oyster reefs spanning the southern estuary that forms Delaware Bay. The region’s Native Americans already were enjoying the oyster as a delicacy. From then on, it occupied the menus and minds of incoming settlers as well. Until the early 1900s, New Jersey ’s oyster industry seemed unstoppable. But by the mid-1950s, overharvesting, pollution, and disease sent the industry on a downward spiral. Although this glorious yet unprepossessing foodstuff never disappeared, its ability to sustain a great industry did. Yet there were already heartening signs of a comeback. As matter of fact, one big reason for my trip was to represent Slow Food USA and its ongoing Ark Project, whose goal is to save foods from extinction, just as Noah saved the animals in his ark. Slow Food Central New Jersey wanted our first national rescue effort to be the Delaware Bay oyster. The Slow Food Ark Project is one of the best weapons in the movement’s international arsenal. Slow Food members identify endangered foods from around the world in an attempt to save them from the mudslide of artificially made food. Our goal is to reintroduce them into the market or to open new niche markets, and we accomplish this by way of our national and international websites and 3  23  through the efforts of local chapters. Our ark carries thousands of foods from around the globe, including rare sea salts, cheeses, beverages, seafood, livestock, fruits, vegetables, and grains. In southern New Jersey, the oysters themselves are plentiful. Rather, it is the industry itself that is endangered, and our Slow Food chapter felt it deserved a boost. The region is home to two varieties of oyster. One is the basic Delaware Bay oyster, which is farmed on leased, prepared sea beds in the bay. The other is the Cape May Salt oyster, farmed on raised beds on the tidal flats that lie right off the beach in the town of Cape May Court House. Thanks to research sponsored by Rutgers University, cutting-edge farming techniques have increased the Salt oyster’s resistance to disease and made it tastier than ever. I’ve kept it on my menu since 2001, and my customers love it. On this day, I’m heading a hundred miles south to Delaware Bay, known for generations as New Jersey’s oyster country. My goal is to visit two champions of the oyster. One is Danny Cohen, whose company, Atlantic Cape Fisheries, is responsible for the tasty and trademarked Cape May Salt oyster.The company has linked with Rutgers to revive the sixty-year-old “rack and bag” method of harvesting that makes these particular mollusks so special. But first, I’ll stop to see Walter Canzonier of the Haskins Shellfish Laboratory, which is part of the Rutgers University New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. If you want to understand oysters and oyster country, Walt is your man. As I drive, I can’t help but chuckle at the complex and larger-than-life personality of my native state. Here I am, a man who works in a modern, Ivy League town, setting out to learn more about a one-ounce foodstuff that once supported an entire working class (and more than a few millionaires) on its squishy back. My 24  Locavore Adventures Baby oysters in Cape May Photo by Jim Weaver guides will be...