We shuck 'em, you suck 'em: A slogan every master oyster sommelier loves

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: You might like oysters. You might even love them. But what does it take to become a master oyster sommelier? We find out as we sit down with oyster master sommelier-in-training Jeremy Benson and his instructors Julie Qiu and Patrick McMurray.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

What's a mermmelier? Think sommelier, but instead of wine, it's all about oysters

Jeremy Benson:

So let's try that with a whole boatload of grapefruit.

Marco della Cava:

That was great. I mean, that was a lot of grapefruit, which I'm not complaining about.

Hello and welcome to Five Things. I'm Marco della Cava. It's Sunday, June 4, 2023.

Today, we're talking about oysters and what it takes to become a master oyster sommelier. Now, even if you're not a big fan of the bivalves, and we see you, there's something in this story for everyone, including a Guinness Book of World Records holder for the most oysters shucked in a minute.

Wow, what a difference ...

Jeremy Benson:

Isn't it wild?

Marco della Cava:

... between the West Coast and the East Coast.

Jeremy Benson:

Yeah. I mean...

Marco della Cava:

I mean, the East Coast, I really feel like I'm in the ocean.

Jeremy Benson:

Yeah.

Marco della Cava:

West Coast, I feel like I'm eating something meaty.

Jeremy Benson:

It's funny, a lot of our guests from the West Coast will often say that tastes like my ocean.

Marco della Cava:

Jeremy Benson is the general manager of Crave Fishbar on New York's Upper West Side. And when it comes to oyster expertise, Jeremy has it in spades.

What can I say? Do we have anymore? Is that the last one?

Jeremy Benson:

Oh, I think we can do one last Malpeque.

I think the most important thing to know about the oysters and oysters in general is how environmentally important they are. We're heavily involved with the Billion Oyster Project.

Marco della Cava:

The Billion Oyster Project is New York City's attempt at cleaning what used to be a really filthy harbor and restoring it as a healthy and vital estuary.

Jeremy Benson:

They take our oyster shells, they put new oyster larvae onto those shells, and so the oysters are able to grow very quickly and they can build oyster beds and oyster reefs here in New York Harbor. Oysters can filter five gallons of water per day, so you're keeping the water clean.

Secondly, it creates an environment. It creates much like a coral reef, it's a keystone species. So as a keystone species, it is a place for other creatures to live. It's a place for other creatures to grow and flourish. And what's come out of that is we have dolphins in the Bronx River, we have harbor seals underneath the Verrazzano Bridge. There was a whale sighting not far off the coast of New York Harbor recently.

Marco della Cava:

All because of oysters.

Jeremy Benson:

All because of the oysters and the cleanliness that they've brought. And then the third thing that they do is they actually create a seawall. And that seawall protects the city. So if you have a storm surge like we did at Superstorm Sandy, you actually have a protection for the city.

Marco della Cava:

I think it's good.

Jeremy Benson:

It looks great.

Marco della Cava:

And then drink it from, that's from the non-hinge side.

Jeremy Benson:

That's right. Slurp it from the cup.

Marco della Cava:

What ocean am I drinking right now?

Jeremy Benson:

Right now, you're drinking what is New York waters right off the coast of Fisher Island.

Marco della Cava:

I should be terrified.

Jeremy is also the guinea pig for an experimental new certification program that will make him the first master oyster sommelier, or the term he prefers, mermmelier, a nod to the French word for the sea.

Jeremy Benson:

It all connects, I think, through the Billion Oyster Project. Brian Owens, the owner and I, I turned to him and I said, "I really want to be certified. I want to be able to go to a table and say not only can I tell you about oysters, here's my badge that says that I really know what I'm talking about when it comes to oysters."

Marco della Cava:

And that didn't exist.

Jeremy Benson:

That did not exist. We scoured the internet trying to find any way for me to get that. And short of getting a doctorate in marine biology, there wasn't really a lot of options. And then we found Julie Qiu and Patrick McMurray we're starting an oyster school. Brian had worked with Julie Qiu in the past. She's a very great blogger. She runs inahalfshellblog.com. And he had met Patrick before.

We went to the Billion Oyster party, which they throw every single year, where a lot of oyster farmers come and share their wares. And it was there that I met Patrick. And he's the fastest shucker in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records. So I shook his hand pretty emphatically and didn't let him go. And then since then, we've really been working together to get this school started and used me as a guinea pig to become an oyster master sommelier. So yeah, I would love to be called a mermmelier. So just like a mermaid, but of oysters.

Marco della Cava:

As it turns out, becoming a master oyster sommelier involves learning a lot about not just oysters, but also sustainability and the environment. I wanted to hear more, so I sat down with Julie Qiu and Patrick McMurray, the two oyster masters who started the Oyster Master Guild. Julie Qiu is an international oyster expert, educator and founder of In a Half Shell, a website devoted to oyster appreciation. Patrick McMurray is a Toronto native, restaurateur, and author who currently holds the Guinness World Record for oyster shucking.

I want to welcome you both.

Julie Qiu:

Thanks. Great to be here.

Patrick McMurray:

Thanks for having us.

Marco della Cava:

You bet. So tell us a bit about the Oyster Master Guild. When did you start it and why?

Patrick McMurray:

It's been going on forever, I think. Julie and I have been floating around in the oyster world together. We met a long while ago at the Galway Oyster Festival, but we knew about each other before that as well. And I guess we've been talking about this for couple of years, going back and forth, trying to figure out what needs to be done in the oyster world as it is. There's no formal instruction for learning about oysters. You just learn from whoever teaches you. And we see this big inconsistency when we look at either pictures online or we talk to people. But we always want to teach it as well, teach it and teach proper thoughts toward it. So we've both been working on it independently on different ideas, but we came together, I guess, in the past year to just really hone this up and come up with this plan.

Marco della Cava:

And you sort of mentioned a bit how you met. What was that meeting like? Where was it? And what happens when two oyster lovers meet?

Julie Qiu:

Which year was this? I think it was either 2014 or 2015. I can't even remember anymore.

Patrick McMurray:

I believe it was around that timeframe. Yes. Yeah, it was great. Julie, you do yours. I'll tell you what I remember.

Julie Qiu:

Yeah. So I was there on the invitation of the Irish Sea Fisheries Board to just be at the Oyster Festival, which is a world shucking competition. And at the show, I remember seeing Patrick. And I had read Patrick's book a long time ago and I knew who Patrick was. And I remember introducing myself and all of a sudden his face really lit up, being a fanboy in a certain way. And that was really surprising. I was going to do that to you. So it was ...

Patrick McMurray:

Oh, because I knew who In the Half Shell blog was and Julie Qiu was just through watching on internet and all that stuff away. And she basically come up and introduced. And I was like, "It's you. Oh, this is cool." And she goes, "Basically, I think I'm going to drop everything in my life just to follow the oyster." And I'm thinking in my head, I go, wow, this one's deep.

Marco della Cava:

Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you. I mean, we all have our passions. I'm a big car geek. But we all remember what was it that first stirred that passion. And I'm curious if in a nutshell, you can each tell me when and why the oyster grabbed you.

Patrick McMurray:

For me, when I was working my first, well, my job out of university, I was working at a oyster bar called Rodney's Oyster House in Toronto. This is before I built my own place. When it really kind of clicked in that I have an idea and a thought toward the oyster, a customer asked, as they always do, "What's the difference between an East Coast and a West Coast oyster? Why should I spend more money on this West Coast oyster? Because that's what they think about, an oyster is an oyster and why are there different prices? And so I said, "Well, East Coast oyster, it's got salty, sweet. The West Coast oyster is ocean, sea salt, sweet cream, melon, cucumber. Those are the different flavors."

And they're going, "Baloney. I'm calling you out on that one." I go, "Well, take away all the sauces, don't put any lemon on it, slide it and chew it up, breathe in like a sommelier tells you to taste they're wine, like this, and you'll see that the ocean sea salt and steely clean that's East Coast. And then West Coast, you're going to get all those notes and you get this melon, cucumber."

So this gentleman, he did this, he was like, "What? You're talking like a sommelier. This is amazing. Look at these flavors." I'm like, "That's what it's all about." And that's sort of where it clicked into me. And we were always trained to do that and teach people about that. But I didn't really get deep into it until I built my own joint in 2001, Starfish Restaurant.

Marco della Cava:

Great. And Julie, tell me about when you fell in love with oysters.

Julie Qiu:

Well, I remember really distinctively having my first raw oyster experience when I was 15. I was visiting an uncle in San Diego. And being a fancy teenager, I decided to order oysters for the table without knowing what to expect. And I remember loving some of them and really didn't like others. And I couldn't figure out why that was until fast-forward 10 years later when I moved to New York. I joined this New York Oyster Lovers meet-up group where there was just a bunch of New Yorkers in a oyster bar without anything else in common but the love of oysters. And from there together, we explored all the different varieties, like Patrick said, tasted them exactly like wines, hearing the stories, and me asking a lot of annoying questions to the chefs who passed me to the distributor, who then ultimately passed me to the oyster farmer.

And I found myself one day kind of at an oyster farm in the middle of the Long Island Sound, picking up an oyster from the water and then just tasting that unique flavor only that oyster has. And I think that that was the moment at the oyster farm when I kind of realized, wow, this is an amazing product. This is amazing story and people. And there's so much that most consumers never get to see. And I think that was when I was like, "There's so much magic behind the oyster that it has to be shared."

Marco della Cava:

So I spent some time with Jeremy over at Crave Fishbar in New York, and he took me through the paces, including having me shuck. He's apparently the first person to be certified as a master oyster sommelier. There's no other masters out there.

Jeremy Benson:

No, there's no recognition in that sense. I'm a world champion oyster shucker. That's just the ability. There's nothing about the knowledge base. And I know a lot of top-end shuckers that asked me to, "Patrick, can you talk to those customers and describe these oysters and tell the stories, because I'm just shucking?" And that's the difference. And that's where we want to get the knowledge base as well as the ability in there as well. And it can fit and benefit the business overall.

Marco della Cava:

Well, you mentioned shucking. You are the Guinness Book record holder, and I want to know how many oysters do you shuck per second or minute? What is the record?

Jeremy Benson:

Well, I have Guinness Book for 39 oysters in a minute, and then 1,114 in an hour. And there's a team thing as well, 8,840 for Team Canada. There's 10 shuckers that did it in an hour and I did the most out of the hour.

Marco della Cava:

So what do you think it is about oysters that people don't get? And realistically, are people going to turn to this the way they do wine? I mean, the parallels to wine to me are amazing.

Julie Qiu:

It's already happening, I think. It's been happening for quite some time. But I still remember when Rowan Jacobsen came out with his book, A Geography of Oysters. That was when I picked it up and I really wanted to become a connoisseur of oysters. And also you can see the New York Oyster Lovers meet-up group, it went from a hundred members to about a thousand in several years. And I think the large cities with access to different varieties of oysters, it's almost like a gourmification of sorts of the oyster, and nowhere else is leading that but North America, I would say. I think oyster consumption is really popular and traditional in many countries and continents. But in the U.S. for whatever reason, because maybe we have so many independent small growers that you can really get to know the same way as wine producers, that people are really starting to say, "Oh, I like this producer." "I like this brand of oyster."

Marco della Cava:

And I know you call yourself a sustainable seafood storyteller. What is that?

Julie Qiu:

So I love to bring people into what makes a particular oyster or seafood special. Why should they care? Why should they think about what they're eating and not just eating it? And that's coming from a person who really likes to eat fast. So I love to take a minute and then show people what they're really getting and what they should appreciate.

Marco della Cava:

And tell us a bit about oysters and sustainability. Obviously, sustainability is a big important buzzword, especially with climate change and other issues. Why are oysters so much more sustainable than perhaps other seafoods and shellfish?

Patrick McMurray:

Being a filter feeder is probably the one main thing. There's many different things about the oyster that makes it sustainable. Filter feeding, they filter phytoplankton, zooplankton out of the water, clarifying the water, creating a better habitat for plant life, and therefore the rest of the ecology underneath the water, intertidal zone and even the deep water. So it really benefits the environment that way.

It is one of the lowest greenhouse gas emission proteins that you can get in comparison to, even comparing to vegetables and water resources. Oysters don't need to be irrigated because they're in the ocean creating this wonderful protein. Versus beef and pork and chicken and fish, there's other imports of energy that has to go into growing it where oyster does not have that.

So Monterey Bay Association and Ocean Wise both showcase that oysters, mussels, clams, and seaweed, those are the top four things that you can eat in the ocean that is beneficial too. And it's high in zinc and the best as well, which is one more thing, the oyster shells a carbon sink. It's a carbon sequester. So they take carbon out of the atmosphere into the ocean, out of the ocean, into the shell, and they sink it. So unless you burn it, destroy it or whatnot, it doesn't go back up into the atmosphere. It stays to wherever the shell is. So we've got them right here. They're all over the place. And you can use them. You can use them afterward as well.

So we're thinking of circular economy in that sense as well, of what do you do afterwards? BOP does a wonderful job, brilliant oyster project, in recovering the shells so they don't go to landfill. They go back into the ocean under their watchful eye of recreating a better environment around New York City. So there's lots and lots. You couldn't do, I don't think, a better protein source as far as sustainability goes.

Marco della Cava:

I was just going to say, so they're delicious and they're helping the planet, which is a pretty good combo.

Patrick McMurray:

Usually, you don't want to say, "Oh, these are nutritious and good for you too." And everyone's like, "I don't want them no more." Because usually it's just like, "Oh, they're delectable." But they are. They're a bit of everything there.

Julie Qiu:

They're a great superfood.

Marco della Cava:

I was going to say, we'll stick to delectable and expensive and then people will love it. Julie, Patrick, thanks so much for talking to us and thanks for your time today.

Patrick McMurray:

Thank you.

Julie Qiu:

Thank you.

Marco della Cava:

Keep on shucking. Sorry, I had to.

Thanks to Jeremy Benson, Julie Qiu and Patrick McMurray for joining me and to Shannon Rae Green and Alexis Gustin for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Marco della Cava. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow with another episode of Five Things.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: We shuck 'em, you suck 'em: A slogan every master oyster sommelier loves