Dirty Oyster Martini and Eating Drunken Seafood

Dirty Oyster Martini and Eating Drunken Seafood

Night before last, I dropped by Pops for Champagne to check out ChicagoFishDude Carl Galvan’s bartending skills. He had vowed to make me a Dirty Oyster Martini, and he’s a man of his word.



The vodka was very cold, and the oyster was superb – though I had to laugh when I saw it suspended Flying Wendella style above the frosty beverage.

Galvan had shucked the oyster and poured the liquor into the drink (thus, “dirty”), and though the bivalvular beast itself had excellent flavor, its liquor was somewhat submerged beneath the powerful vodka. If I had one suggestion for improvement, it’d be to add more oyster liquor (and as you don’t want to just pour the liquor off the other oysters, I guess you’d have to add more oysters-on-the-stick, too). This may sound like an odd combination, but I really like anchovy-stuffed olives in a vodka martini, and Carl’s combo is a short step from that.

Or here’s a thought: why not just shuck oyster and then pour cold vodka into the oyster shell, with the oyster still in there, and drink the whole beverage out of shell (or, say, a half-dozen shells)? Or, more humanely, shuck the oyster, pour in vodka to get oyster smashed, and then cut abductor while oyster is feeling no pain. Lest this last thought seem too preposterous to consider, I should note that last summer I was sipping some Casa Nobles tequila at a tasting, and one of the Casa Nobles reps told me that years previous she had released some lobsters into a large pot of tequila (she gets a good volume price I’m sure on this premium liquor), which she said both marinated the still living meat and made for more tender meat as the lobsters were less concerned about being boiled alive after enjoying a bath in organic tequila (incidentally, Case Nobles tequila is very good, probably some of the best I’ve had, and I have had a few good and a few really bad versions of Jalisco's most famous juice).