1/17/2023 0 Comments Best oyster spat in mississippi![]() ![]() Ryan's grandfather also used wild harvesting - "all the destructive stuff we rail against, that's kind of our heritage," he notes. This made it a prime target for harvesting seed. "The New York harbor oyster was pretty much fished out by around the 1860s," Ryan says, "so they had to start coming down with their dredge boats and taking a bunch of seed and bringing them up to New York harbor, because they just weren't producing enough." The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in North America, but it was underpopulated at the time, so the native oysters were able to survive much longer and in much larger numbers. The Croxton family has a history in oysters that dates back to the 1890s, when wild harvesting depleted much of the oyster population not only in Virginia, but in other areas of the East Coast where the bivalves once grew abundantly. That's why partnerships like the one between the Big Red F restaurant group's six Jax Fish House locations and Rappahannock Oyster Co. But much of that seafood isn't found on menus in this country: America's sustainable seafood is often too expensive for those in the buying market in the U.S. Molly Martin October is National Seafood Month, which celebrates the fact that the United States is a leader in sustainable seafood. While product delivered around Virginia goes through UPS or is shipped on freight trucks that make a number of stops before reaching Richmond, just over sixty miles away, oysters destined for Denver take a direct route to the airport, often reaching the Mile High the evening of the same day they were pulled from the shallow water where they were grown. "Jax gets our oysters before Richmond gets our oysters," says Ryan Croxton, co-owner of Rappahannock Oyster Co. After a 24-to-36-month growth cycle, oysters that have reached the right size for distribution are packed on ice and shipped all over the country, including to Denver. A small crew works from early morning to late afternoon year-round, tending to the ongoing harvest of Crassostrea virginica, the oyster species that is native to the area. Each is filled with oysters of varying sizes - hundreds of thousands per day. On a dock just feet from the restaurant, cage after cage is hauled in off shallow boats on the Rappahannock River. Like terroir with wine, the word "merroir" reflects the fact that the flavor of an oyster changes depending on where it's grown, when it's grown and the conditions that year. Over 1,700 miles away, in Topping, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay, a dozen raw oysters are served at an outdoor table overlooking the water at Merroir, one of six eateries owned by the Rappahannock Oyster Co. While Jax's raw menu includes a rotating selection of oysters from both the East and West coasts, these are a sweet, buttery, low-salinity variety dubbed Emersums, as in "’Em are some good oysters." Slurping one from its shell immediately transports you far from landlocked Colorado to somewhere with salty breezes. A dozen raw oysters arrive at a table at the Jax Fish House LoDo location, freshly shucked and glistening. ![]()
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