Widow’s Hole Great White Saddle Rock Pipes Cove A mainstay at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, at Nick & Toni’s in East With some of the most prestigious New York Another of those white, salty, One of New York’s famous old oyster names, Hampton, and other toney places, Pipes Cove oysters are Greenport oyster accounts, including Le Bernardin, the full-bodied, tannic, brittle- the original Saddle Rock was a formation in neighbors to Widow’s Hole, the two coves separated by Fanning Point. Grand Central Oyster Bar and Della Famina, the shelled Long Island oysters. the East River near Norwalk Harbor. If you Pipes Coves live in the back 40 of the Silver Sands Motel, growing just rich, lively Widow’s Hole fl avor derives from the Great Whites, as you’d expect liked large oysters, you looked for Saddle beyond the roped-off swimming area. Both Pipes Cove and Widow’s Hole Peconic itself, and from the hundred-foot-deep from the name, are pretty big, Rocks. By 1832 Saddle Rocks were kaput. have a salted iron fl avor note that is the essence of Greenport oysters. channel running between Greenport and Shelter and usually good value. But the name has cleverly been revived—and Island, through which most of the bay funnels. trademarked. Today, they are from the Con- necticut side of Long Island Sound, and of The Oysters of medium size, with medium brine. Th ink of Long Island them as a larger, saltier Bluepoint. Snuggled within the forked fi shtail of Long Island’s East End are Peconic Bay, Noyac Bay and Gardiner’s Bay. A hundred years ago, after the prodigious oyster beds of the Great South Bay were destroyed, the East End waters took up the slack, harvesting mountains of oysters from the clean wa- ters of Greenport and Shelter Island. Th e oysters were as sweet as could be, and grew justly famous. Th en the oyster beds disap- peared, done in by pollution and a brown tide in 1984–85 that scorched the life out of Peconic Bay, starting with the phytoplank- ton and working its way up the food chain. Fortunately, there has been a revival. Here’s a selection of those boutique mollusks you might fi nd at your nearest raw bar.

Shelter Island The Shelter Island Oyster Company was one of the big players in Long Is- Great South Bay land oysters right up to the 1950s. Mecox Bay When last we left the Great South Bay, it Now some clever islanders have revived Mecox Bay is home to weekend mansions Oysterponds was a 1940s cesspool of duck sauce, not fi t the name and grow oysters on an 86- Robin’s Island (East End) and to a surprisingly robust population of Oysterponds are the epitome of East Bluepoint for oysters or even people. Th e Bluepoints acre farm in the clean and salty waters wild oysters, perhaps the last in the region. End oysters. They have the classic Coasting on their name for nearly two Company, which staggered through the Oysters harvested from the waters of Gardiner’s Bay on the east side of As a wild oyster, a Mecox Bay can only umber-and-black shells, which in my centuries, you will see Bluepoints on second half of the 20th century import- near this unblemished 435-acre Shelter Island. Like other Peconic Bay be harvested in season, which runs from experience always yield a particularly every oyster menu in Manhattan. Th e ing frozen lobster, actually tried its hand paradise in Peconic Bay are also oysters, Shelter Islands have the distinc- mid-November to the end of April. Its fl a- savory oyster with a refreshingly tan- oysters themselves are seeded on the at oysters again in 1998. Th e business was known as East Ends. Th ey have that tive black-and-rust shells and the black vor is mild, not salty, and oddly alkaline. nic, cast-iron bite. Oysterponds grow so bottom of Long Island Sound, both never profi table and the facility, in West recognizably Peconic medium brine stripe on the top valve. Th e shells are Brewster’s Seafood in Hampton Bays, has fast—note the soft lip on the bill—that the Oyster Bay area of Long Island Sayville, may soon be transformed into and body and iron richness, though wafer-thin, so you must be very careful a saltwater well in Shinnecock where it re- they have the thin shells that also seem and the Norwalk area of Connecticut, condos. But somebody out there is selling not quite the liveliness of a Widow’s not to shatter them, but once inside you lays Mecox oysters to get them salted up to characterize East End oysters. Shuck dredged up a few years later, and have Great South Bay oysters. Keep your eyes, Hole or Oysterponds, which come will fi nd a savory three-inch oyster. an extremely mild taste. and your taste buds, peeled. from closer to the open sea. before selling them. with care.

56 edible EAST END FALL 2008 1 edible EAST END HIGH SUMMER 2008 FALL 2008 edible EAST END 57