French oysters
Oysters — huîtres in French — belong to the cooking of the western and northern coasts, and France is Europe’s largest producer and consumer: about 150,000 tonnes a year. Half of that is eaten in the two weeks between Christmas and New Year, when oysters appear on almost every festive table in the country.
A delicacy with a long guest list
People have been eating oysters for a very long time: archaeological finds push the habit back some 164,000 years, and in France itself oysters were on the table in Roman times. They were gathered through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but farming on the coastal beds only began in the 17th century.
French history is full of enthusiasts. Henri IV (1553–1610) is said to have eaten three hundred at a sitting. His grandson Louis XIV had them delivered fresh to Versailles, or wherever he happened to be, and could get through six dozen. Diderot and Voltaire ate them for inspiration, Napoleon before a battle, and Casanova reportedly breakfasted on fifty.
In the 1920s, when the beach resorts of Normandy and Brittany came into fashion, oysters came with them. Today they are not a luxury food: yes, you will find them on Michelin-starred menus, but far more often on an open-air market stall or at a seafront hut for a few euros a dozen.
How French oysters are farmed
Oysters are grown in marshes and estuaries on both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts. They do best in salt and brackish water where the tides work on them: the constant movement builds a thicker, stronger shell. Most beds sit in shallow bays and lagoons.
Two kinds are farmed. The flat oyster, huître plate, is the native one — harder to raise, produced in small quantities and correspondingly expensive; you may see it sold as belon or marennes. It accounts for only one or two per cent of the French industry. The rest is the cupped oyster, huître creuse, a species originally brought in from Japan.
Bringing an oyster to the table takes between one and three years. Left alone in the sea, one can live for twenty years and grow past 30 centimetres.
Reading the label
A French oyster stall looks intimidating until you know that the labels describe only two things: size and plumpness.
Size is a number. Cupped oysters are graded from 0 to 5, flat ones from 000 (the largest) down to 6. The smaller the number, the bigger the shell.
Plumpness is the ratio of meat to shell, and this is where the words come in. Fines have an index between 6.5 and 10.5; spéciales are above 10.5 — fleshier, because they have been grown longer.
Three more terms describe oysters finished in the claires, the shallow salt basins of the Charente coast:
- Fines de claire — twenty to the square yard, at least two months in the claires, where the nutrient-rich water sometimes tints them green.
- Spéciales de claire — ten to the square yard over the same two months, so they come out thicker and firmer.
- Pousses en claire — only five to the square yard and at least four months, over which they double in weight. These are the ones gourmets queue for.
Where the oysters come from
The main basins are in the north — the coasts of Brittany and Normandy are lined with farms — with three more to the west, the centre and the south.
Normandy
Strongly iodised and meaty. Regulars have their favourites: the spéciales of Isigny for sheer flesh, Saint-Vaast for a nutty finish, and the beds off Utah Beach for a sweeter oyster. See also the cuisine of Normandy.
Brittany
Cancale, Saint-Brieuc, Morlaix and the bay of Brest produce both cupped and flat oysters, and most of the country’s small flat-oyster output is Breton. The Cancale oyster grows within sight of Mont Saint-Michel and tastes firm and salty; the deep-water oysters of Paimpol, farmed far out in the bay, are juicy and plump. The famous belon takes its name from three estuaries on the south coast of Finistère where seawater mixes with fresh water from the rivers and springs. Around Quiberon and in the Gulf of Morbihan the tidal currents give a brisk, distinctive taste. More in the cuisine of Bretagne.
Marennes-Oléron and the west
The Charente basin alone accounts for up to a third of national production, and it is here that the claires gave their name to half the vocabulary above. Farms also work the coasts of Pays de la Loire and Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Arcachon and the south
Arcachon is the southernmost of the Atlantic basins, and oysters are farmed on the Mediterranean too, in the lagoons of Languedoc.
Buying, opening, eating
Oysters are almost never rinsed: the liquor is the taste. You will find them in supermarkets, at fishmongers and on street markets, kept on ice and stacked into displays; restaurants serve them the same way. Order a demi-douzaine (six) or a douzaine (twelve); half a dozen per person is the usual first course. The word is pronounced wee-tra, with the h silent, and an oyster bar is a huîterie — every sizeable town has one.
To open one, use a short, blunt oyster knife. Put the blade into the hinge — the thickest part, where the two shells meet — twist gently to break the seal, then run the knife between the halves and under the oyster to free it.
Purists eat them plain. In practice they arrive with a lemon wedge and a mignonette, the sharp dressing of vinegar and chopped shallot. Small oysters are always eaten raw; large ones are sometimes baked with butter, garlic, herbs and breadcrumbs.
Use the small fork to detach the oyster, then lift the shell like a spoon. And chew — swallowing one whole skips the texture and most of the flavour.
What to drink
Champagne is the traditional partner, and a Blanc de Blancs works particularly well. A dry white from the Loire or a Chardonnay does the job just as happily on a summer afternoon. To go further into it, see the most renowned French wines and the wine routes of France.
Back to French cuisine for the rest of the regional dishes.
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