When talking about oysters, everyone always says how brave was Ogg the Prehistoric Fisherman, the first person ever to eat one.
Joshua Huston
OK, so which one's Ogg the Seattleite?
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The Walrus and the Carpenter 4743 Ballard Ave. N.W., thewalrusbar.com. Mon.–Sat., 4 p.m.–close.
Take a look at The Walrus and the Carpenter's Food Porn.
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But that's bullshit. Ogg wasn't brave. Ogg was either crazy or just really hungry. He'd probably tried to eat lots of other things that day—sticks and dirt and bugs and clumps of mud—and then bumbled down along the seashore, saw a rock filled with meat, and tried to eat that, too.
The brave one, the smart one, was Ogg's buddy: the second guy ever to eat an oyster. He'd been watching Ogg. He'd seen him choke on dirt and try to gnaw through tree branches. He'd watched Ogg wander along the shore, pick up what looked like a rock, and slurp out the creature living inside. He then watched Ogg for a little longer—probably to see whether or not the craziest mother in the Paleolithic neighborhood suddenly dropped dead from rock poisoning or whatever—but finally went down to the shore himself and hunted around for a meat-rock of his own: to look down into it, at the quivering, live thing within. And then he ate it.
That guy—Prehistoric Beachcomber Number Two—is someone I can identify with. His thought process must've run something like, "Well, if Ogg can eat this and live, maybe it's good."
Sitting at the curving tin bar at The Walrus and the Carpenter is Ogg the Seattleite. Ogg has obviously come here to eat oysters—lots of oysters. He is focused, undistracted by anything else on the menu. He has eyes only for the woven metal baskets at the far end of the counter, filled with the day's haul of shellfish.
He orders carefully, in a pattern that makes sense only to him—bouncing around among the 10 or so different varieties on offer, pairing this with this and that with that. He talks to the server working the bar, asking her about the different properties of the Kusshi, the Eagle Rock, and the Olympia—which are sweet, which are metallic, and which carry the sharpest, most flooding sting of the sea. To her credit, she is able to answer most of his questions. She helps him pair wines with them, and goes into detail about the home addresses of many of his selections.
The Blue Pool oysters are from Hood Canal, grown in bags and tumbled clean. They're small, salty in the liquor, and briny in the meat. The Sweetwater are from Lopez Island, the Kusshi from Deep Bay, B.C., with long, deep shells and a delicate, clean flavor. With them, a bottle of white, a French petit Chablis, or a Pouilly-Fumé.
I am sitting one seat down from Ogg the Seattleite, watching him. He arrived a few minutes before I did and immediately entered into his oyster negotiations with the server. I watch him when his first tray arrives: eight rocks full of meat, displayed on a bed of ice and served with a little cup of champagne mignonette, a little cup of grated horseradish. He has chosen two each of Hama Hama, Blue Pool, Kusshi, and Kumamoto, and as the platter is set before him, he fusses—adjusting it into some kind of clock arrangement as the server gestures to each variety in turn.
When he eats, he closes his eyes. Sometimes he chews, sometimes only swallows. I pretend to study the menu, but really I'm watching Ogg—waiting to see which oyster affects him the most deeply, which seems to touch on whatever desperate hunger drove him into Ballard, to a restaurant named for a Lewis Carroll poem about the indiscriminate love of a Carpenter and a beachcombing Walrus for talking shellfish. But he seems to like them all, to have no particular preference. He eats his way through his platter in record time, slurping liquor and wiping his chin with a napkin, seeming none the worse for wear.
So when the server comes to stand in front of me, I tell her that I too would like some oysters. "Kusshi," I say. "Kumamoto, Blue Pool, Hama Hama—just one of each for right now."
When she brings them, I understand what Ogg was so focused on. The oysters are cold and achingly fresh, each just slightly different or vastly different from the other. The Kusshi are my favorite—a little nugget of flesh as if I'd suddenly grown a second, small tongue, washed by the taste of concentrated sea. The Kumamoto are the most familiar, improved with a hot spike of horseradish to cut the slick feeling of the meat.
Ogg eats oysters all night. I eat far fewer, but get my fill—a dozen or so and a glass of wine and a bottle of Czech lager. Ogg is still going strong when I hop down from my stool, pay my bill, and wind my way through the tightly packed crowd toward the door. For all I know, he stayed until closing (talking, no doubt, of cabbages and kings), but I leave happy and satisfied.
