Wild Maine Belon Oysters

  Today was an exciting day for me at the Market.  While chit-chatting with one of our seafood vendors to the store I inquired about wild oysters and recalled an article mentioning the Maine Belon oyster.  These oysters are both notoriously rare and intensely flavored.  Compared to the hundreds of thousands of oysters produced by individual farms in Maine, only a scant 5000 of these Belon oysters are harvested from Maine waters each year.  I honestly didn't expect to be able to ever see them.  Anyway, the vendor says, "We just got a sample sack from an harvester so i'll send them your way."  And so it began...

  To say that eating a Maine oyster is like kissing the ocean on the lips would be to say that eating a Maine Belon is like making out with salt marsh mud, but withholding the grit.  It was in fact the most potently flavored oyster I've ever consumed, which it not an immense sum, granted, but includes all the varieties I've been able to track down for sale in Maine.  Only one of four Belons which I opened actually had any brine remaining, which a tragic commonality as I found the brine to be utterly crucial to any slim chance of balance this oyster had.  But these, I guess, are not about balance so much as intensity.  There's a deeply embedded flavor of all things oceanic and a touch of decay... fermenting salt marsh, wet, sun baked seaweed, dried fish and a dash of cove waters.  Intensely reminiscent of place from which they are harvested.


  Admittedly, when I tried the first one at work this afternoon I nearly gagged on it but swallowed it anyway and suffered an ill stomach for a solid two hours probably just out of shock.  I was more prepared this evening and even managed to savor it for long enough to chew it a couple times before swallowing it down with a grin.  Super intense but in a romantic way and with such an explicit terroir aspect to it I couldn't be anything but fascinated.  These are a truly rare and genuine experience.