OK, enough of that.: UPDATED

Instead, here is a brief treatise on the fried oyster.

I am fortunate enough to live nearby the source of the most prized oysters in the world. I happen to like oysters anyway, but I can tell you that I had no idea what an oyster could be until I first ate one of these little miracles .

Raw, they are otherworldly. Unbelievable. Sweet, clean, meaty, light; a hundred shifting, changing flavors move across your tongue. If you've ever had a really good wine you know the kind of flavor experience I mean; it turns and flashes like a coin dropped in a pool of water. It leaves a faint memory of itself behind that begs for yet another taste. Yes, they really are that good. I have eaten 30 0f them at a sitting. They are so amazing and delicious that they leave me close to tears. Seriously. Tears.

The Chuckanut Bay (Rock Creek to you gourmets) oyster lives in the shallow, rich, muddy margin where fresh and salt water meet, at the base of Chuckanut Mountain on Puget Sound. The area is one of the most clean, beautiful, otherworldly environments you can imagine; pristine, temperate, green.

The oyster is not outwardly beautiful, of course, in its rugged shell, nor is it easily had once raked from its bed of clay and stones. It runs small. It hardly seems worth the effort, in fact. But once the creature is removed from its shell it is as tender and mild as a foggy day, grey and moist and pearly.

It is the lamb of the oyster nation. Where other oysters reek of conjugal excess or tidal wrack, the Chuckanut Bay oyster only hints at love, salt and sea. You taste fresh water, sashimi-sweet fish, warm milk, Douglas fir, salt, granite, grass dried in the sun.

The flesh is like soft bread in the mouth.

Of course, all this is simply a matter of selecting a good oyster and making sure that the shortest possible time elapses between ocean and plate. Cooked, the oyster is another matter entirely.

It takes a lot of restraint and discipline to cook an oyster correctly. Unfortunately, far too many cooks treat it like just another protein, and that is the reason that people who do not like oysters don't like them. Too much heat destroys an oyster. It becomes a rank, rubbery, wretched mess. The stomach swells and the contents become bitter and musky and taint the entire creature. The muscle parts weep and turn into strips of rubber. All this happens in an instant.

A properly cooked oyster is not dark. It should not be swollen fat and round in the middle. It should not be smoking hot. It should not be buried under a hard brown shell of fried starch, nor should it be lost in a gummy mass of greasy batter.

A properly cooked oyster should just be....set. The flesh should merely be somewhat firmer than when it was raw, and of a uniformly lighter color throughout. It should be oval and flattish. All it wants is a light breading; and by this I mean a fast toss through some plain white bread crumbs mixed with a little cornstarch-no water, no batter, no egg. Then onto a lightly oiled surface that is not smoking hot, but one which has just passed being too hot to lay ones' hand on. It should spend mere seconds to a side; front, back and then front again, and then onto the plate where the heat of the cooking will continue to set the flesh.

Thats it. It takes just about as long to read about as it does to cook.

A run of the mill oyster benefits from proper treatment, of course, but a Rock Creek oyster becomes something completely new. It still greets you with a multitude of changing flavors but they have all blended more closely, become something milder and deeper. This is an oyster that you can eat with enthusiasm without worrying that you'll be moved to tears (at least if you're a big dork like I am.)

I had a couple of these this afternoon for lunch, in a nice, light foccacia sandwich. Some aioli and some mixed greens accompanied them, and that was all that they needed. It was like biting into a delicious cloud.

Every now and then you eat something that is perfect. Today I did. I came into that place with a bad attitude. What I received was a blessing.

It made my life better.
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update:
This is the place we went to for the wonderful sandwich:

http://www.sycamoresquare.com/Suite130312th.htm

Mambo Italiano in Old Fairhaven.

The website needs to be updated; the place has been redesigned and the ambience is a lot more sophisticated.
The food is excellent without being overdone. The service is very professional, without being fawning or condescending. Far from being chi-chi or annoying or trendy (like many places in Fairhaven), it is simply a pleasant, adult place to have a grown-up meal of excellently prepared food.