I’m back from vacation and it was an amazing, relaxing, joyful, food-filled week. Settle in for a bunch of photos and a fried oyster recipe at the end (or, if you’d rather, skip the narrative and go straight to the recipe at the end of the post).
This past winter, in the middle of a gray, rainy day, Zach mentioned a memory I have of my mother. When my mom was still alive and living in Houston, every once in a while she would call me and suggest we play hooky for the day. We would take a day off of work, I would go pick her up, and we would drive to Galveston. We’d walk on the beach, maybe visit the Moody Gardens or tour Bishop’s Palace or shop the kitschy little beach-side shops, but we’d always end the day in a restaurant overlooking Galveston Bay, eating raw oysters and drinking beer. You wouldn’t think two smallish women could eat as many oysters as we did, but we always managed to put down a few dozen over the course of a sunset. My mom has been gone since 1999, but when I think of her, I often think of our afternoons in Galveston and oysters & beer.
Sometime this past January Zach turned to me and said “I want to do that thing that you and your mom did. Maybe not in Galveston. Maybe in … oh … Chesapeake Bay. But we need to spend an evening on the bay eating oysters and drinking beer. Let’s make that happen.” So I did. (Sidenote: That’s how Zach and I roll. He comes up with an idea and says “make it happen” and then I do. And more often than not, it turns out pretty well.)
We stayed for 6 days in a charming Italian style cottage/guesthouse that I found on VRBO. We had private beach access, a view that was to die for, a firepit, and a grill. Most nights we slept with the a/c off and the doors open to catch the sea breeze and hear the surf.
On our second day there, we called an oysterman whose name we got from a local and he sold us a box of 100 oysters for $40 – fresh out of the bay that morning. After we’d eaten raw and grilled oysters to our hearts’ content, we shucked the rest and put them in the fridge, to be dipped in cornmeal and fried the next morning. We had a hangtown fry breakfast the next morning and then fried oyster po-boys for dinner that night after a day of kayaking around Chincoteague Island.
I was completely fascinated by the concrete boat breakwater at Kiptopeke which we could see from our perch on the bluff. I took a ton of photos and my only regret from the trip is that we didn’t take our kayaks all the way out to see them up close.
Every morning we sat out on the bluff and had our coffee and watched the birds. On any given morning there were bald eagles, buzzards, herons, pelicans, oh so many gulls …
Daily walks on the beach always turned up something new: tiny crabs, a puffer fish, feathers and patterns in the sand.
And every night the sunsets were spectacular.
On Thursday we left Chesapeake Bay (sadness) and broke up the drive by spending 2 nights in Charleston. Thursday night we ate at The Ordinary (a seafood tapas/small plates restaurant). Their outdoor patio is wedged in between two buildings on King St and it’s just a charming location. If you get the clams or the oysters, you have to try the cantaloupe mignonette. It was the most surprising thing on the plate and I had no idea I’d love it the way I did. (Also they make a mean dirty martini!)
Friday afternoon we scored a lunch reservation at Sean Brock’s Husk restaurant (a bucket list item for me). The johnnycake appetizer is huge and delicious, smothered in glazed pork belly and cabbage slaw. It could be a meal in itself and is definitely big enough to share with the whole table. For lunch I had the shrimp and grits and Zach had the brisket bahn-mi, both of which were fabulous. And the grapefruit aperol spritz was refreshing, summery, and deadly!
The rest of the time, we explored the historical sites of Charleston and napped in our hotel room. (Hey … it’s vacation!)
Saturday we came home, and today has been spent doing laundry, processing photos, and getting ready for re-entry into the real world tomorrow.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos of the trip. I didn’t take the Nikon this time. All pictures are from my phone, the Olympus mirrorless, or the tiny GitUp (a GoPro knockoff) that I used to create 2 fun sunset time-delay movies. (They’re too big to upload to the blog, so you can see them here and here. For my first efforts at a time-lapse video, I’m pretty happy with them.)
The dead-easy fried oyster recipe is here:
Fried Oysters
- 2 dozen (or more) freshly shucked oysters, drained and patted dry
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 2 cups coarsely ground cornmeal
- 2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 16 oz vegetable or canola oil
Put the oysters in the buttermilk and let them sit for 15-20 mins while you mix the cornmeal and spices and let the oil come to temperature.
Put the oil in a large frying pan or skillet. I used a 10″ cast iron skillet and kept the oil about 2″ deep. Set the burner to medium heat and keep the oil around 350°F. Don’t let the oil smoke.
Mix the cornmeal and the spices together and put it in a shallow bowl or a plate.
Once the oil is up to temperature, begin taking the oysters from the buttermilk and dredging them in the cornmeal mixture. Add them to the hot oil, leaving space between them. Do not overcrowd the pan. You will probably need to do 2-3 batches in order to cook all the oysters.
Cook for 1 min and then flip and cook for another full min. Do not leave the oysters in the pan more than 2-3 mins. If you’re not getting crispy, browned oysters in that time, then your oil isn’t hot enough.
Remove the cooked fried oysters from the heat and rest them on a paper towel to drain. Repeat until all the oysters are fried.
Eat them plain fried, or use them as part of a hangtown fry breakfast or to make oyster po-boys with. Enjoy!