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Sunken Treasure How the humble Eastern oyster reclaimed its place as the royalty of Virginia’s waters By Stephanie Ganz
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Alex Lambert of Lambert Shellfish harvesting oysters from long lines
and unmatched quality. “I’d rather spend my money on farmers who are living here and employing people here, who can come to my restaurant and see what I’m doing,” Anderson says. “We can educate each other. That’s important to me, and we’re so lucky to have it. … The way they’re farming these oysters is so much better, not only for the quality of the oyster but also for the quality of our bay.”
Water Works
Sarah Matheson-Harris started Matheson Oyster Co. to pay homage to her family and her hometown of Gloucester following the deaths of her parents. She and her husband, Eric, started a small oyster operation off the end of the Matheson family dock but soon pivoted to a piece of working waterfront in Gloucester’s Guinea area and began raising oysters using the adjustable long-line method. In traditional bottom-culture oyster farming, spat, or tiny seed oysters, are spread on a shallow area of the sea floor that’s been prepared with a base, such as recycled oyster shells, to keep the spat from sinking and being smothered. The growing oysters may be separated periodically to help them develop better shapes and sizes, and are harvested by hand or using a dredge. Off-bottom methods lift the seed oysters above the sea floor to protect them from predators, reduce sediment buildup and let them tumble freely to develop more marketable shapes. Oysters grown on racks or in bags, cages or baskets are also easier to monitor, separate and harvest. For the long-line method Matheson uses, stakes are sunk into the sea floor and strung with adjustable wires that support baskets of growing oysters along the water’s surface. The approach uses the action of the rising and falling tides and the waves to produce cocktail oysters with deep cups. “It is a very contentious way of growing oysters because you see everything; it’s at the top of the water column,” Matheson-Harris explains. “I like to call it an underwater vineyard.” Matheson oysters hit the market in 2022 and were immediately popular, thanks in part to a marketing strategy that focused on chef relationships and hand-delivery service. The company’s oysters are available all over Virginia and Washington, D.C.; in Richmond, they are on the menus at Lemaire, Adarra, Bar Buoy, Buckhead’s and Birdie’s. In addition, Matheson does over 80% of its wholesale business outside the state. “The coolest thing for me is getting to put the name Gloucester, Virginia, on a Michelin menu somewhere — just getting to kind of give that kudos to the place where we’re growing the oysters, because that’s the biggest part of it all,” Matheson-Harris says. The pandemic-born Steamboat Wharf Oyster Company also grows its oysters on the water’s surface, but rather than
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the long-line method, it employs a Flipfarm system. Callie Hyde, who co-owns Steamboat Wharf with her husband, Thomas, calls Flipfarm “a great equalizer.” The semi-automated system, developed in New Zealand, lets them use their boat’s power for tasks such as rotating entire lines of baskets, rather than doing them by hand. The system helps the Hydes create a pristine cocktail oyster with a 2.5inch shell, plenty of salt upfront and a vegetal-umami backbone that’s common in Rappahannock River oysters. The churn of the water tosses Steamboat Wharf’s oysters around like a rock tumbler, creating a hard shell and a healthy bite with a firmyet-tender texture. The Hydes run a tight operation with just three employees. They’ve
Oysters run through a sorter at Cappahosic Oyster Company in Cape Charles.
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TOP: COURTESY LAMBERT SHELLFISH; BOTTOM: COURTESY CAPPAHOSIC OYSTER COMPANY
grown steadily while still maintaining a personalized approach. In addition to White Stone spots like Adrift and Miss Mary Seafood, Steamboat Wharf oysters are on the menu in Richmond restaurants, including Lillian, Alewife and Lafayette Tavern. “We just want to keep growing in a sustainable and high-quality way,” Hyde says. “We want to be known as a great oyster in Virginia.” Mark Vann and Marcia Berman of Cappahosic Oyster Company share that sentiment. Unlike Matheson-Harris and Hyde, who began their oyster journeys relatively early in their respective careers, the duo at Cappahosic had successful professions before starting the oyster company as a kind of high-effort retirement plan. They started farming in Cape Charles in 2015 and grew to a midsize company that sells to restaurants across the state through several distributors. Vann and Berman offer three varieties of oysters: their signature Victory Points, grown in bottom cages where the salinity is higher and the bottom current provides circulation; top cage-grown petite cocktail oysters called Minnie Pearls; and larger oysters, ideal for roasting and grilling, called High Marks (a tribute to Vann). “Selling oysters is very personal to us. It’s a labor of love to grow oysters,” Berman says. “There is something about raising oysters and providing food for people that’s a great source of pride.”
Raw Data
Talk to just about any oyster farmer and their sense of stew-
ardship of the waterways bobs to the surface immediately. That’s especially true for Lambert Shellfish proprietor Alex Lambert, who raises two types of oysters at the mouth of Hungars Creek on the Eastern Shore. He works directly with VIMS and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission to collect and share data about the effect of his adjustable longline operation on the ecosystem. “We love this bay. We want to improve the quality of this bay. We want to be able to grow and provide a product from this bay,” Lambert says. “It’s not easy, and it takes a while, but there’s a better way forward where scientists and farmers and the public can work together and learn more about this, because there is still plenty to learn. Case in point: In September, Lambert’s entire farm — an estimated $400,000 worth of oysters at various stages of growth — succumbed to a so-called “red tide,” or harmful algal bloom (Alexandrium monilatum). “It was like someone just turned off the lights,” Lambert says. “The water was this dark brown, mahogany color, and there was a really strong smell.” Blooms occur when nutrients, such as fertilizer runoff, combine with warm water to cause excess algae growth, which can block sunlight, deplete oxygen and, as with Alexandrium, produce toxins. Despite raising the lines and even removing stock from the water, Lambert lost about 4 million oysters to the bloom in a matter of days. Although it couldn’t have saved his oysters, Lambert says he hopes that incidents like this one can help improve realtime communication between scientists and farmers. “It seems like we’re in a sort of beta mode, capturing data via drones and field sampling and asking how we can use that information,” he adds. Lambert hopes more farmers can contribute their own data to help inform future management practices. “There are a lot of variables up in the air, and I think Virginia is going in the right direction,” he notes, crediting scientists like Bill Walton for improving the dialogue between VIMS and oyster growers. Oyster farming and oyster culture are indelible to what it means to be a Virginian, Walton says, and it’s up to all of us to support the industry that’s given so much. For consumers, that simply means eating more oysters. For producers, it means adapting to modern oyster farming methods of land and water use. “When I look out on the water and I see a commercial farm,” Walton says, “I see something that is adding to the community, that’s providing jobs, improving the environment. I love the idea that we’re living on a body of water where people are out there working the water and that what they’re harvesting is a product that you take out of the shell and eat raw. That has to tell us something about the place we live. That’s an amazing thing.”
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EAT&DRINK
IN DEPTH
LIKE BUTTER (AND BREAD) The humble ingredients are made in-house at local restaurants By Eileen Mellon
B
read and butter were prominent parts of my early food memories. There were those thinly sliced, crusty Italian slices at Carrabba’s, served with a sidecar of herbs; the plush pumpernickel loaf at Outback Steakhouse, perched on a small cu ing board alongside fluffy, endlessly airy bu er. The first summer I moved to Richmond for college and worked at the now-defunct O’Charley’s on Broad Street, I survived on glistening, almostwet-with-bu er rolls. (I now know they used a triple-bu er method.) But that was a while ago (maybe a couple of, ahem, decades). Back then, bread and bu er were less a culinary statement than an expectation. They appeared on the table almost automati-
House-made focaccia with cultured butter at Grisette
cally, something to nibble on while waiting for dinner or keep reaching for long a er you decided you should stop. Today, bread service has become an opportunity, with local chefs making their own bread, churning bu er in-house, and fermenting and culturing it with the same thoughtfulness as a composed dish. Donnie Glass believes it all starts with the bu er. “It’s one of my favorite things to eat in any of our restaurants, and miles away from a stick of Land O’ Lakes,” says Glass, owner of the rustic, French-leaning restaurants Beaucoup, Grise e and Jardin, and the bakery-cafe Petit Four. Glass and his crew began making their own bu er weeks a er opening Grise e and haven’t looked back. In French cooking, bu er isn’t merely an ingredient; it’s foundational.
Pastry chef Kendra Noel portions dough at Petit Four.
“We were so intentional about everything, and still are,” he says. “The housemade sourdough bread needed a condiment that we felt was a worthy dance partner.” The team ferments the cream for a few days to a week, depending on the flavor it develops. Once ready, the cream is whipped until the solids separate from the liquid. The bu er is then washed by hand in an ice water bath, shaped, salted and portioned for service. Despite the lengthy — and messy — process, Glass says, “We wouldn’t have it any other way.” The finished cultured bu er exudes a cheesy twang and is fluffier and so er than “normal” bu er, too. “As painful as the ‘slow food’ memes can be, it’s true that when you take your time, make real food from actual scratch ingredients, the outcome is almost always more delicious,” he says. “Bu er may not be quite as miraculous as an egg, but it’s pre y damn close.” At Grise e and Beaucoup, that bu er lands alongside hunks of house-made focaccia and sourdough from Petit Four. At Petit Four, cultured bu er is more than a simple spread on the jagged-edged, crusty jambon beurre, layered with ham
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