Mothershuckers! - Samish Bay, WA

One of the highlights of our recent trip to Seattle/Vancouver was a serendipitous stop to the Taylor Shellfish Farms off the Samish Bay located in Northern Washington State. This was a pleasant and scenic detour from the relatively mundane I-5 route between Seattle and Vancouver.
The Taylor Shellfish Farms has been around for approximately 40 years but the Taylor family has been involved in the shellfish business in one way or another for well over 100 years. I forgot the exact figures we were told, but in Samish Bay, Taylor owns many acres of tidelands for their oysters and other shellfish they harvest such as Manila clams. They have a total of 12 operations located throughout the world. Nonetheless, the company is highly active in promoting environmental issues dealing mostly with water quality and work actively with both local and federal environmental groups and agencies.

After spending the previous few days sampling mostly native Pacific Oyster varieties (Crassostrea Gigas) inside restaurants and taverns in Seattle, it was nice to go to the source, select a few super-fresh types offered right onsite, and then go outside to shuck them ourselves on this majestic and serene coastline.





One of the great benefits to shucking your own oysters is the attempt at retaining as much of its natural liquor as possible. Drinking this marine nectar might be the most enjoyable stage for me when savoring raw oysters. Unfortunately, most retail oyster shuckers don’t take the care or are just plain ignorant to the liquor’s overall importance to the whole experience.



This is an East Coast specie (Crassostrea Virginica) bred here in the North Pacific. I find this Virginicas variety, overall, to have much more complexity and subtlety than the usual one-note melony Pacific Gigas species.



Onsite processing plant at Samish Bay.





Taylor Shellfish Farms

What a thing it is to eat oysters from the sea, and, in such a beautiful place with one's closest friends. 3 for 3 PIGMON! Thanks for sharing it with us.

PIGMON wrote:This is an East Coast specie (Crassostrea Virginica) bred here in the North Pacific. I find this Virginicas variety, overall, to have much more complexity and subtlety than the usual one-note melony Pacific Gigas species.

The December 2008 Saveur has a short article (here) on Taylor Shellfish Farm's long experience growing C viginica oysters at Totten Inlet, at the southern end of Puget Sound. Taylor now cultivates this Eastern species at both Totten and Samish Bay (in the northern Sound). Even though we were at Samish, I believe we sampled the Tottens. Regardless, they're really great oysters.

PIGMON wrote:After spending the previous few days sampling mostly native Pacific Oyster varieties (Crassostrea Gigas) inside restaurants and taverns in Seattle, it was nice to go to the source, select a few super-fresh types offered right onsite, and then go outside to shuck them ourselves on this majestic and serene coastline.

It's actually the Olympia oyster (Ostreola conchaphila) that's native to Puget Sound. Pacific oysters (C gigas) were introduced to Washington from Japan in the 1920s, right there at Samish Bay (though not by Taylor).

Taylor Shellfish Farm, Samish Bay