Last week I finally read The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, by Mark Kurlansky. My dad gave it to me while we were in Vegas last month but I didn’t get to seriously dig into it because I’ve been a bit swamped at work lately. Kurlansky is a wonderful writer and this is the third of his books that I’ve read. The Big Oyster is every bit as fascinating as Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and Salt: A World History. Most of my friends roll their eyes at me when I tell them this, but it’s true. Since I’m from Rhode Island, I have always sort of thought of oysters as second-class bivalves, bastard, grotesque step-brothers of my beloved littleneck clams. Now I have a new respect for them and even slurped a raw one tonight — we had dinner at The Palm with my girlfriend’s parents.
The Big Oyster is as fun to read as Cod, and as fact-filled as Salt. It’s almost more of a history of New York and the Hudson than the story of the shellfish. I really enjoyed reading it, though. True New Englanders harbor hundreds of years of animosity for anything having to do with the Big Apple and the Yankees and somehow I’ve managed to learn just about everything I can about this country without ever really reading about New York. I’m glad my dad told me to read it, though, because I was enthralled. I now want to go to Delmonico’s and see the waterfront and stroll down Broadway and explore what is arguably the most well-known “big city” in the world …
