For the lay person, the James Beard awards are the food equivalent to the Oscars. Eponymously named for preeminent food icon, James Beard, the awards are given to  winners who are selected by more than 600 industry professionals and honored the first week of every May in New York City.  (A few years back, Chef Jody Adams invited me down to shuck oysters at the reception beforehand. I was star struck and it remains today one of the coolest experiences I’ve had since joining ICO).

At Island Creek, we are as much fans of the food industry as we are participants in it. So as the awards were unveiled last night, I was locked on to my Twitter feed. Reading people’s thoughts as the names were announced brought a layer of depth to the conversation that used to take a few days to unfold. Oh, Twitter…

My takeaway every year is that Island Creek is so, SO fortunate to work with the best this business has to offer. Chef Michael Anthony at Gramercy Park, now best Chef New York, has been a great supporter of ours. Grant Achatz’s, Next, won best new restaurant. It’s crazy that our oysters are served there. Bentel and Bentel was awarded best restaurant design for their treatment of Le Bernardin. We were fortunate enough to have Peter Bentel design ICOB. He is incredible. And for No. 9 Park to be recognized for their wine program, wow. Boston’s long been lucky to have the treasure that is Cat Silirie; I’m happy her efforts have been recognized.

To the remaining nominees and winners, congratulations. What an accomplishment to be recognized in one hell of a competitive industry. I can say, I’m already psyched about next year’s awards. Certainly, over the course of the year, some amazing stories about the food industry will be told, and talented people recognized, but not with the same prominence that comes with being a Beard Winner.

As I said, we are fans first and foremost, and Sunday night was a great night to be a fan.

-Shore Gregory, Executive VP, ICO

Besides Lineage and ICOB, Jeremy is the consulting chef at both Eastern Standard and The Hawthorne – plus he’s got a family of five, including a new baby girl at home. We’re still not sure how he has time to do it all since he seems to be at every restaurant every single day (Time travel? Super powers? An IV of 5-hour energy strapped to his arm? We have our theories…) but the folks at Grub Street Boston managed to get it out of him in a recent interview.

As long as he finds some time to make it down the farm and crack open a beer every once in awhile, we’ll support whatever he’s got cookin’. Congratulations, Chef. Here’s to many, many more.

-Erin Byers Murray‘s most recent book is “Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm“.  Her work has appeared in Food & Wine Magazine, Body + Soul, Boston Magazine, the Boston Globe, and many more publications.

Last week I went running during my lunch hour.  I deftly wove (okay, dragged myself) through some back roads and found myself at the middle school track. Running the track, I came upon a path that struck me as familiar as an old friend’s face. This was the place where I saw my first fight. This was also the place where I kissed a boy. Can’t say that one was my first. I was surprised by the memories and it brought me right back to that time, those feelings.

It is singularly bizarre experience – working as a professional person in the small 15,000 resident town you spent your childhood in.  This is especially odd for me because I moved away from the northeast for many years. The idea of living in Duxbury was inconceivable – I had moved away because this little town couldn’t accommodate who I wanted to be. It was too limiting, too preppy, too known.

Fast forward ten years, and I’m running on my old middle school track, feeling all the good and bad ways that I felt during that time. If you want to escape, this is not the way to do it. People know who you are, who your parents are. They remember the time you smashed the windows in the high school, you remember their children’s drug habit. Locations are filled with stories – the town forest, the beach. The Vicker’s house. My parent’s backyard.

Speaking of which, how many of us have had our mother’s stop by the office unannounced? Well, just about everyone here has. This is a sort of closeness that many people would rail against. And I get it, because I was there at one point. I needed space.

What surprises me most is that I came back. I was incredibly nervous about my return. I didn’t have a solid reason beyond ‘it’s where I’m from’ and that was barely sufficient. Lucky for me, I did come back. Because from my new vantage point, I can see that in focusing on those old ghosts I wasn’t able to anticipate some of the sweet stuff.

The moment I saw the path on my run I was struck by some of this sweetness: The deciduous and coniferous landscape that inspired and taught me. The people that cared for me, those I cared for, and shared experiences with. The character of a small place which doesn’t – can’t – pretend to be anything other than what it is, what it has been.

In being confronted with how I identify or don’t with this town by working here, I have felt one major emotion emerge. It’s consistency and depth surprises me as much as the path did on my run. Put simply, I feel like I have a place. A space that is connected to history, my own, and the history of a landscape and a people. The support that I feel in this connection underlays every other experience I have. It allows me to move through my day with perspective, and that perspective brings peace. And while rooted in history, that peace feels especially new.

I suppose I’m still surprised at how I got here. How I got myself back to this coast. But the ‘why’? Why I’m here now? That question doesn’t exist for me. It is. And I am grateful.

–Dana Hale runs the sales department here at ICO and goes by many aliases including “Oysteress” and “The Hale Storm”. Don’t get in her way.

The quality here is due in part to the fact that all seafood can be shipped overnight from one coast to the other. But it’s also a testament to the dedication of Shaw’s seafood buyers who are on the front line, dealing with seafood purveyors around the world on a daily basis (including Sarah, who calls Island Creek for an order almost every morning). What’s more, they’ve partnered up with the Shedd Aquarium who has help them put together an entire menu of sustainable seafood options. So while it might seem ideal to have access to the Atlantic on a daily basis, it’s also inspiring to know that there are a team of folks doing everything they can to get that same freshness and quality to the heart of the country, too.

-Erin Byers Murray‘s most recent book is “Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm“.  Her work has appeared in Food & Wine Magazine, Body + Soul, Boston Magazine, the Boston Globe, and many more publications.

As Island Creek has grown beyond the farm to a wholesale company, restaurant, and Foundation, instilling in our ever-growing “family” a culture of hospitality and goodwill has become one of the most important things we work on everyday. Like most things at Island Creek its been a collective endeavor. We have come to call it Goodwill Hunting.  We meet every other Friday to discuss topics from communication, to trust, to assuming the best. Its been an incredibly empowering exercise for the Island Creek team, unlocking things in each one of us we didn’t know we possessed.

Last weekend, we opened the door on Goodwill Hunting and invited a group of friends from around the city to listen to some of the most respected minds in service and business talk about the importance of cultural hospitality. I was fortunate enough to moderate a panel that included Anthony Rudolf of Thomas Keller’s restaurant group, Andrea Czacher of Danny Meyer’s Maialino, Andrew Holden of Eastern Standard, and Mark McWeeny of Rue La La.

Many amazing ideas were exchanged, each panelist drawing on their deep and varied experiences to show why hospitality in business is fundamentally important. I’m still digging through my notes and takeaways, but to me the idea that a room full of people can get together and talk about the value of saying thank you makes me believe that choosing a course of goodwill and empathy is a paramount decision for businesses that are looking to succeed in the long run. There are already a number of quality organizations putting this notion to good use–it is a movement that holds tremendous power, and I believe that we are just scratching the surface.  In such a fast paced world, we often forget to put others first, but what I’ve learned through our meetings and the Goodwill Summit is that amazing things can come from doing just that..

Both collectively and individually, we have a long way to go. As business people and human beings we aren’t perfect. Not even close. In many situations we don’t have control over mistakes or shortfalls, but we do have control over the approach we take and the care we give to fixing those mistakes and improving those shortfalls. The fun part about Goodwill Hunting is it’s a journey. It will likely never end, but along the way, ideas will be exchanged, lessons will be learned, and Island Creek will continue to strive to not only grow great oysters, but be better citizens of this big, diverse world.

Untitled from Island Creek Oyster Bar on Vimeo.

I’ll keep you posted on how the journey progresses.

-Shore Gregory is the EVP of Island Creek Oysters and knows his way around a Ripstik.

– Landlubber Fish Programs
One of New England’s coolest cheesemonger’s has started a fishmonger program out in Western, MA. At Great Barrington’s Rubiner’s Cheesemongers and Grocers, they’re bringing in a weekly selection of seafood and have created a genius service: Rubi’s Friday Night Oyster Bar (usually from 5 to 11 pm with oysters and clams on the half shell). Sign up for their weekly newsletters for more info: fishmonger@rubiners.com

– The direct-to-chef CSF
Charleston, S.C. fisherman Mark Marhefka created Abundant Seafood to eliminate the middle man — namely large-scale seafood distribution centers. He now supplies a few restaurants in Charleston (FIG, McCrady’s) with locally caught seafood but also has 120 retail customers who pick up a monthly subscription from him directly. (The NY Times gave him some nice coverage a few years back.) Closer to home, Trace and Trust in Rhode Island is directly supplying a number of New England restaurants with fish caught right off the RI coast.

-Erin Byers Murray‘s most recent book is “Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm“.  Her work has appeared in Food & Wine Magazine, Body + Soul, Boston Magazine, the Boston Globe, and many more publications.

One of our “Road Warriors” Matt Rohrig is a big fan of the New York Giants. To his defense he was born and raised in southern Connecticut, so he was closer to Giants Stadium than Foxboro. However, he is a Bruins, Celtics, and Yankees fan also, a clear-cut identity crisis. He takes one of the trucks down to NYC twice a week and stops at over 30 restaurants to deliver oysters, clams, and whatever other goodies Dana packs the truck with.

Matt was at Gillette on November 11th when Elisha Manning marched his team of misfits down the field and into the end-zone as time expired, hammering another rusty nail into the hearts of Pats fans everywhere. As if 2007 wasn’t enough, we were again reminded of the Patriots (defensive) inability to close out games. Matt made sure we didn’t forget for the rest of the season. We tried to make sure he remembered that the Giants finished 9-7 and had to beat “America’s Team,” the Dallas Cowboys in the last week of the season to stumble into the playoffs, but it was a futile effort.

The Patriots put forward their best effort on Sunday to ruin the rest of the year. A safety on their first offensive play of the game, followed by a lackluster performance on both sides of the bowl burned this game into our memory. Matt Titus declared 10,000 years of hate, and the rest of the Ops crew sans Rohrig agreed.

Fortunately the Island Creek van is making one of it’s bi-weekly runs into New York City today. At 11am the New York Giants victory parade will be marching through Brooklyn, bringing with it thousands of fans, and a side-prize of shut down streets, horrible traffic, and drunk pedestrians. I have my fingers crossed that Matt (Rohrig) gets stuck in that traffic and doesn’t get back from New York until 2 AM. Then maybe he will keep it quiet about the Giants for a day. Probably not, but hey, at least we can beat the Redskins right? No that doesn’t really matter either. Whatever, I’m just going to go watch the Bruins and tell Matt he should be wearing an Islanders jersey.

-Bryan Hoban is having trouble sleeping and won’t be watching ESPN for a while. Until then he continues his role in the Marketing department of ICO.

Indeed, a frequent highlight of archaeological sites worldwide are cyclopean mounds of oyster shells known as middens.  The biggest contain millions and millions of shells (millions!), yet nowadays people award themselves a hearty pat on the back when they knock back twelve in a restaurant meal—that was a self-shucked midnight snack for a Shinnecock indian.   Today, like so many manual skills, shucking has gone the way of the dodo and is once again the tallest hurdle for would be ostreaphiles to conquer.   We continue to butcher our beloved bivalves despite the fact that we now have an array of elegant solutions at our disposal.  It is the hope of this writer that with a little edification on the right tool for the job you, the reader, will go forth and shuck with alacrity—or at least purchase a good knife.

People often ask me what the best oyster knife is.  You’ve probably realized by now that it wouldn’t be worth writing an entire blog post about this if there was a quick, easy answer.  The overarching truth is that it really comes down to personal preference, but after shucking tens of thousands of oysters in my time on this planet I’ve at least developed a contemplative non-answer: “It depends on what kind of oyster you’re shucking.”

Indeed, the very best human tools are those designed and honed for one highly specified function—the samurai sword, the key, the tuning fork, the alpine ski.  These are instruments with which one can practice their art or execute a task satisfactorily for an entire lifetime and only achieve perfection on the day when somebody hands them a better version.

I humbly submit that the oyster shucking knife deserves placement on that venerated list.  Shucking an oyster is like picking the lock on a treasure chest—sure you could hurl it off a building and smash it open, but the delicate contents within would be ruined.  By comparison, shucking a clam is a brutish act in which one pries the lid off said treasure chest—it does the job, but graceful it is not.  Give oyster shucking its due and use the right knife.  You wouldn’t open a bottle of wine with a hacksaw.

On any given night at Island Creek Oyster Bar there are as many as fifteen different types of oysters on the list, representing as many as five different species, from both coasts, Canada and the US.  Looking behind the raw bar will not reveal one glinting steel knife—the ONE—rather, you’ll see a bucket full of eight or ten knives—a veritable quiver of arrows.  Each of our magnificent shuckers has a favorite knife for each oyster, and this is how it should be.

Working with an ancient knife and cutlery maker from the Western part of our state, we think we’ve developed the best perfect tool for shucking Island Creek oysters.  It has a long, thick handle for grip.  It has a full tang and high grade steel for torqueing.  And most importantly it has a stout but sharp blade that comes to a point.

The point is key because it allows you to exert less force as you try to ease the knife between the two shells at the oyster’s hinge.  In the event you screw things up, it may in fact be easier to inflict a small laceration with our sharp pointy knife, but given the immense amount of force required to insert a round, dull knife you’re much more likely to do serious damage.  We’ll take the bandaid over a trip to the ER any day—its much cheaper.  Not only that, but casually inserting the blade and nonchalantly tossing aside the top shell to reveal the pearly meat versus the inevitable grunting , groaning, and sweating that comes when you really have to put your weight into it is the difference between impressing your friends and making everyone feel awkward.  Further, the blade is short because our oysters are not wide.  It only has to be long enough to span the width of the oyster and cut the abductor muscle.  Anything longer just elevates the center of gravity during the entry phase—not good.

Now, I would argue that the thing that makes Island Creeks unique (and the best) is not any one trait, rather it is the remarkable joining of many good traits in one beautiful little oyster.  What this means for our knife is that its pretty versatile—the all mountain ski.  It works well on almost any similarly sized oyster from Virginia to Prince Edward Island and even on some smaller West Coast oysters.   That’s not to say, of course, that you won’t find a knife that’s better for a certain variety.  Do not, however, attempt to shuck, say, a Gulf oyster with the ICO knife.  You’re better off using a flathead screwdriver on those rocks.

Armed with the necessary knowledge and (once you complete checkout….wink) a masterpiece of a shucking knife, break free of the shackles of your Neanderthal past! Go forth and shuck!

-Chris Sherman runs marketing for Island Creek and is unfortunately better with a shucking knife than a pen.

I’m fresh off a trip to Virginia to speak about the importance of branding to a group of farmers and industry experts in the Chesapeake Bay, which is dealing with a monumental increase in their supply of farm raised oysters. So this idea of how Island Creek fits into the larger market, and the future of the oyster industry, is on the front of my mind.

Back to Virginia, first.  In 2010 – Farmers in Virginia planted approximately 26 million oysters. In 2011 – they planted close to 76 million oysters. Those are some staggering numbers. To put this in the appropriate context – Massachusetts farmers planted a fraction of this number. The conference dealt with how to increase demand to preserve the industry as they currently know it, and not commoditize the oyster. This happened to the hard shell clam industry years ago.

From our most basic economic classes, we all remember what happens when supply outpaces demand. The price comes down to a point where supply matches demand. This holds true for the Oyster business, just like it is most likely in your business. What’s even more interesting is that as supply increases, the decrease in price actually occurs faster than the speed of increasing supply. Its very easy to understand why the folks in the Chesapeake are working hard to figure out the best way to prevent a drastic decrease in the price of their oysters due to a sudden, sharp increase in demand.

For me, the obvious question that follows is how big is the oyster market? How many of you out there are going to eat oysters? Does it reach a saturation point? Are we even close to that point? In order for farmers to make a living in the northeast – oysters need to be worth a certain price. If it declines, it will be hard to make a living and people will start to leave the industry. Where the price eventually bottoms out is when the last remaining farmer is willing to farm at the rock bottom price. Pretty crazy scenario, right? It’s a scenario that isn’t a promising one and would not be good for the farmers. You may have access to really cheap oysters – but its unsustainable.

Back to the question at hand – how big is the oyster market? How many oysters can be grown in the United States and be gobbled up by hungry oyster eaters so farmers can earn a living? We believe whole heartedly that there is latent demand in the minds and stomachs of Americans. For years and years, oysters were consumed in abundance. There were thousands of oysters bars, oyster reefs, shucking houses, oyster middens, etc. The main reason this went away is because oysters were over harvested, pollution increased, and the supply crashed.

For the first time in 100 years, supply is coming back and its coming back strong. Because of this, the sleeping giant of the American Oyster lover is being stirred. To me, that’s exciting. Not because we can sell lots of oysters, but because it signals the return of a great food movement where farmers can earn an honest, unsubsidized living, and consumers can eat delicious protein that evokes not only place but history.

At the end of the day, lots of oysters are being grown, and the industry needs your help.  So, the next time you saddle up at your favorite oyster eatery be it in Boston or beyond, don’t think of a supply curve, think of the people, the place, and the history that you are about to consume. It’s a win / win.

-Shore Gregory is the EVP of Island Creek Oysters and loves spreadsheets.

I set up a small aquarium in my garage where about a hundred or so eggs, in four clumps, swirled around with some red algae.  Since that day I have been checking the eggs, trying to determine any changes.  One group turned darker than the rest and I noticed a bunch of little eyeballs peering out at me.  Yesterday (Sunday) I found two little fish swimming around.  Then they died.  So today (Monday) I changed the water and split them up into two static (no air bubbles) systems because I felt that perhaps the turbulence from the bubbles may have tired them out.  I put the “ripe” egg ball into a glass dish with some new bay water and the rest into a small aquarium.  A few hours later I checked them – dozens of little fish were swimming around the glass dish and I could see more escaping from their egg cases – success, I am a new father.

Now the question is how often to change the water and when to begin to feed them.  I think that their yolks last about a week and then perhaps I should introduce some brine shrimp or, as suggested to me tonight, daphnia.  Eventually I will identify the species.  I think they might be Longhorn Sculpin.  But they could be Grubby or Shorthorn Sculpins, according to Michael Ursin’s cool, but simple, book on temperate Atlantic fishes.  I hope that they are Longhorn Sculpins, whose Latin name is Myoxocephalus octodecemspinosus.  The name “Sculpin” is odd enough, but according to the state of Maine, M. octodecemspinosus has additional common names of “hornpout” and “horndog.”  Wouldn’t it be great if I could tell people that I’m raising a family of horndogs?  Or perhaps I’d have to excuse myself from meetings because I’d have to rush home to feed the hornpouts.

I’ll let you know if these scenarios ever come to fruition.  In the meantime, if so inclined, you may read more about horndogs if you click here.

- John W. Brawley or Dr. John uses science  to cheat at fishing.