Oyster Regions of the World

The North American East Coast

One species — Crassostrea virginica — across three thousand kilometres of coast and an enormous flavour range. Prince Edward Island and the Canadian Maritimes give lean, sharp, high-salinity oysters with long cold growth. Massachusetts and Long Island Sound give the classic briny-then-sweet profile that most people picture when they say "oyster".

Further south the water warms and freshens: the Chesapeake gives milder, sweeter, plumper oysters, and the Gulf gives large, soft, low-salinity ones that are at their best cooked, chargrilled, or in a po'boy.

The Pacific Northwest and California

Cold, mineral-rich, heavily fjorded water in Washington and British Columbia produces the deepest-cupped, most vegetal oysters in the world — cucumber and melon are the recurring notes. Willapa Bay, Hood Canal, Totten Inlet, and Baynes Sound are the names to know.

This is also the home of the Kumamoto and of what is left of the native Olympia, and the region where "West Coast oyster" as a flavour category was invented.

France

26 varieties in the index, and the most developed vocabulary of finishing in the world. Marennes-Oléron claires — shallow former salt ponds where oysters are finished for weeks — produce fine de claire and spéciale de claire, and the green-gilled pousse en claire, coloured by a diatom the oysters eat.

Normandy, Brittany, and the Bassin d'Arcachon each have their own character, and the Belon river is the home of the European flat. France is also where oyster grading by size — numbers 5 down to 0, smallest to largest — comes from.

Ireland, Britain, and the North Sea

Galway and Carlingford in Ireland, Whitstable and Colchester in England, and the Limfjord in Denmark are the historic native-flat waters of northern Europe. What survives is small in volume and high in intensity: metallic, mineral, long-finishing oysters that reward drinking stout.

Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and beyond

Sydney rock oysters from New South Wales are among the most distinctive oysters anywhere: small, dense, and savoury, grown slowly over three or four years. Tasmania and South Australia grow excellent Pacifics; Coffin Bay is the name that travels.

New Zealand's Bluff oyster (Ostrea chilensis) has a short, fiercely anticipated season and a following to match. Japan grows gigas in Hokkaido, Hiroshima, and Miyagi — the source population for the entire global Pacific oyster industry — and serves them with ponzu rather than lemon.

Common questions