Pages tagged Culture
The Ritual of Service
A dozen chosen, shucked and set down in front of a guest who has been told something true about it. What separates a perfect dozen from an adequate one.
The After-Show Table
After the show, the crowd moves to the reception, and the table follows a grammar. Oysters are part of it, and the oyster has made it onto the runway too.
The Vernissage and the Shell
From de Heem and Chardin to Manet's 1869 Salon picture and today's art-fair previews, oysters keep turning up in the art world, on the canvas and around it.
Ocean Luxury
In shellfish, luxury comes from knowing which oyster, from where and when, more than from price. Why three well-chosen oysters beat twelve expensive ones.
The City That Ran on Oysters
Before the skyscrapers and the subway, New York was an oyster city. Some 350 square miles of beds ran beneath its harbor until the last closed in 1927.
Casanova's Fifty
The famous fifty-oyster breakfast has no source. The oyster game in Casanova's memoirs does: Rome, 1771, a hundred oysters shipped from Venice.