It's been several weeks now that customers have been asking "When is the Oyster Fritter coming back on to the menu?" Finally we can say "Soon!" Kevin's go-to fish guy has said there ought to be some decent oysters coming from The Bay in a week or so.
Why do we have to wait, you might ask. Other places are serving their oyster fritter right now, and have been all year round. Why can't BT do that? Well, the reason is, we serve a superior oyster fritter - and I know that sounds boastful but it's absolutely the truth. The oyster fritter we serve - in season only - is the original, served originally at the Ironstone Cafe, a restaurant now defunct but still remembered fondly by many. Others have tried to make it but they just can't seem to get it right, at least that's what I am told. Even our buddies at the KVI, who had Kevin's recipe, couldn't please the masses who clamor for it every fall and winter. There just seems to be something special that Kevin does with it, I guess, beginning with using plenty of tasty oysters as the star ingredient, not the flabby, bland-and-blah ones available during the off-season. And that means, like other really good things - think asparagus and Stayman Winesaps, hard crabs and tomatoes, shad roe and Honeybells - they are best only during a certain time of year. They are a seasonal menu item: just as there are no crab cakes at BT in January, there is no oyster fritter in July. (As an aside, let me make it clear, as well, that this idea for the Fritter came from a sous-chef at the Ironstone, Sylvia Little. She deserves as much of the credit for this dish's popularity as anyone.)
Actually, this has cost us customers. People will leave when they come in March and we don't have a crab cake on the meu, and we've had the same thing happen in the summer when we don't have oysters. This past Saturday, after much fanfare as to who sent them to our place to eat ("And we could have chosen any other place, but we chose to come here.") a couple left when they saw that we didn't have enough "local" seafood available. We had our (Maryland) CrabSteak of course, but the fish of the day was Scottish Salmon (a farm raised fish from an approved source, but certainly not local), and we had calamari and crab in other forms. I wondered, as they left, where they would be going to get that "local" seafood. Local rockfish has been tight so far, and unless they've got the Marvesta Shrimp - which no one around here does - there's not a whole lot of actually "local" seafood available to serve. My brother brought us some oysters this weekend that he bought in Rock Hall - and they were mighty yummy - and we had some Wye River soft shells on Saturday night, but not too many. It's a tough one. Where does it all go? Is anyone out there serving strictly local seafood? That's a question for my "network" I guess, which, by the way, is really "floundering". Ha ha, get it?
Oh Kay.
Anyway, mostly let's remember that the Oyster Fritter will be here in it's own time and season and it will be here for a good five or six months. Stay tuned.
Why do we have to wait, you might ask. Other places are serving their oyster fritter right now, and have been all year round. Why can't BT do that? Well, the reason is, we serve a superior oyster fritter - and I know that sounds boastful but it's absolutely the truth. The oyster fritter we serve - in season only - is the original, served originally at the Ironstone Cafe, a restaurant now defunct but still remembered fondly by many. Others have tried to make it but they just can't seem to get it right, at least that's what I am told. Even our buddies at the KVI, who had Kevin's recipe, couldn't please the masses who clamor for it every fall and winter. There just seems to be something special that Kevin does with it, I guess, beginning with using plenty of tasty oysters as the star ingredient, not the flabby, bland-and-blah ones available during the off-season. And that means, like other really good things - think asparagus and Stayman Winesaps, hard crabs and tomatoes, shad roe and Honeybells - they are best only during a certain time of year. They are a seasonal menu item: just as there are no crab cakes at BT in January, there is no oyster fritter in July. (As an aside, let me make it clear, as well, that this idea for the Fritter came from a sous-chef at the Ironstone, Sylvia Little. She deserves as much of the credit for this dish's popularity as anyone.)
Actually, this has cost us customers. People will leave when they come in March and we don't have a crab cake on the meu, and we've had the same thing happen in the summer when we don't have oysters. This past Saturday, after much fanfare as to who sent them to our place to eat ("And we could have chosen any other place, but we chose to come here.") a couple left when they saw that we didn't have enough "local" seafood available. We had our (Maryland) CrabSteak of course, but the fish of the day was Scottish Salmon (a farm raised fish from an approved source, but certainly not local), and we had calamari and crab in other forms. I wondered, as they left, where they would be going to get that "local" seafood. Local rockfish has been tight so far, and unless they've got the Marvesta Shrimp - which no one around here does - there's not a whole lot of actually "local" seafood available to serve. My brother brought us some oysters this weekend that he bought in Rock Hall - and they were mighty yummy - and we had some Wye River soft shells on Saturday night, but not too many. It's a tough one. Where does it all go? Is anyone out there serving strictly local seafood? That's a question for my "network" I guess, which, by the way, is really "floundering". Ha ha, get it?
Oh Kay.
Anyway, mostly let's remember that the Oyster Fritter will be here in it's own time and season and it will be here for a good five or six months. Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment