In dining rooms around the world, oysters have become as standard as popcorn at the movies. Served glistening on platters, they continue to sell even as their price climbs. New York City restaurants routinely serve a half-dozen for $24. But it’s the price of oysters in London that will catch people’s attention. At Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill, the clubby, century-old seafood house off Regent Street, a single Kelly oyster from Galway, Ireland, goes for £9 ($11). Can any one bivalve be that delicious?
Bentley’s Kelly isn’t covered in caviar or sprinkled with 24-karat gold flakes. It’s a variety of native oyster, a species indigenous to shallow waters in Europe, Great Britain and Ireland. The reason for the eye-opening price tag is that the mollusks are rarely farmed, because they take almost six years to mature—not unlike a fine wine. (The more common rock oysters, which originally came from the Pacific Ocean, take about two years.)
Natives are available from September to April and then they’re gone: It’s illegal to harvest them in the warm summer months when they reproduce, which means you’ve got about two weeks left to try one that’s already been pulled from the sea. Otherwise, your next opportunity will be the end of summer. At Bentley’s, head shucker Federico Fiorillo says the restaurant spends more than £3 for each Kelly oyster and one-sixth of them have to be discarded when they don’t meet Fiorillo’s quality standards.
