The Big Oyster Mark Kurlansky

New York is many things to many people. To some of us, it’s a place that we strive to be a part of. The ultimate goal. To some of us, it’s a hive of scum and villainy. And to some of us it’s a nice place to visit, but we wouldn’t want to live there.

But for a little over two centuries it meant one thing to everyone: Great Oysters.

Wait…oysters? Really? In New York City?

That’s right. All along the Hudson River, Raritan Bay, Liberty and Ellis Islands (which used to be called Big and Little Oyster Islands), the East River…basically all over the estuary grew some of the best oysters in the world. The water around there was so clean and mixed so well with salt and fresh water that all kinds of other fish lived there, too. Saltwater, fresh water, Caribbean, sharks…just about anything you can think of lived off the coast of Manhattan. That’s one reason why so many poor people could earn a living there: they could fish all day and eat what they caught. Or they could go out, pick some oysters and then sell them. So many oysters were sold and eaten that NYC was known for them.

What happened? Well, that’s what Mark Kurlansky (author of Salt and Cod) is here to tell us. Starting from the times of the Lenape Indians he tells the entire history of New York City through the eyes of the oyster and its eater. We learn about the early settlers and how enamored they were of this tiny shellfish. We move through time to the 1700s where the entire world looked to NYC as the source of the best oysters in the world. And then the 1800s with the Civil War and the advent of the Trans-Continental Railroad that allowed the rest of the new country to taste of the fruits of NYC’s labor.

Along the way, we see what Manhattan and the surrounding estuary used to be and what it has become. It was once a “sweet smelling” area full of different animals and beautiful wetlands. Then, as more people moved there, it became a wasteland of waste. More people meant more sewage. And that sewage meant dumping it in the water. What else would you do with it?

Kurlansky does something that a lot of people never thought possible: he brings back the original beauty of the Hudson River Valley. And he tells a history that we may never have seen.

By the end of the book we have seen what pollution can do to a fragile ecosystem and how it can basically bring a city to its knees, changing it forever.

But Kurlansky isn’t all doom and gloom. He has hope for the tiny land of New York City. He tells of the clean up effort that has started since the mid-70s and how far they’ve come.

All of this he does with humor and grace. He goes off on tangents about the different phylum of oysters and the chefs who came from France in order to use fresh NYC oysters. He knows how to keep his audience interested in this tiny creature that spends all of its life in one spot, unable to move once it has planted itself.

He also includes a LOT of recipes for oysters from the olden days. So many, in fact, that, while making me hungry for oysters, was almost annoying. They are all written in the old way of writing recipes and are very hard to follow, so don’t try them at home. (Not to mention the fact that almost all of them call for over 30 oysters. These folks LOVED their oysters.)

It’s hard to imagine how many oysters New York City went through in a year…but Kurlansky helps us imagine. And, in doing so, helps us realize just how gluttonous our culture is. Especially in New York City.