Shaw’s Oysterfest is an annual event held near the long-time River North crab house of the same name, and besides local oyster shuckers (like, well, Shaw’s), they bring in oyster purveyors of various types from all over the country . . . or, in this case, the country directly to our north. I got to talk to two of the visiting suppliers before the festival began last Friday; today it’s Daniel Notkin, who co-owns Montreal’s Notkin’s Bar à Huîtres (oyster bar) near the Place d’Armes as well as the seafood importer the Old Port Fishing Company. He’s a champion oyster shucker, most recently taking first place at Seafood Expo North America in Boston in March. And, as founder of the Open Pier Foundation and collaborator on a documentary about oyster sustainability called Shuckers, he’s also heavily involved in oyster conservancy. Watch the film’s trailer and you’ll see that he’s a high-energy advocate for the tasty bivalve, despite the surprising fact that he never even tried one until he was 29. 

What are they like?

   It is, but the added danger in Canada is that cold weather. Because of the cold weather and the low sunlight—in the Gulf [of Mexico], you get a four inch oyster in about a year. In Massachusetts, eighteen months. In Canada, Prince Edwards Island, five years. So two years ago, we had that terrible winter storm, most farmers lost about 20 percent of their stock. That affects it for a year to two years, if we don’t see it rebalance itself. We’re hoping that this year will be a nice mild winter to give them a break.

 Now I’m a competitive shucker, as silly as that sounds. If that’s even a thing. I think to myself, I cannot believe that I have an undergrad in bio/psych premed, and a master’s degree in novel and screenplay writing, and I shuck oysters and come to great events like this. This was exactly my five-year plan.


 Oysters really hold this whole environment together. So then people say, ‘Well, if they’re so great, why do we eat them?’ Oysters are the only food in the world that the more you eat, the better it is for the planet. The reason is that they went through what fish are going through now, a hundred years ago. In 1840, nobody thought they could eat all the oysters, but with the advent of rail transportation, they were harvested to near extinction by 1900 in so many areas—Chesapeake Bay, France, England.