Prices at Southerleigh range from $2.50 for the Gulf variety to $3.75 for the tiny, briny Petite Salt. On my visit, there was an additional, off-menu selection, allowing me to sample five in total - including a surprisingly good Gulf oyster that needed only a slight hit of lemon and a whisper of horseradish to wake it up. Your other option is to check in at the restaurant’s main desk and ask for an outdoor seat, from which you can summon up the menu on your phone from the convenient QR code. At certain times, staff will also shuck oysters outdoors, and a server will recite availale options to you at the walk-up counter. At least there are periodic dancing fountains on the adjacent plaza. If you try hard, you might be able to conjure a waterside setting at Southerleigh’s outdoor oyster bar at the Pearl. An excellent wine match, the 2018 William Fevre Champs Royaux Chablis, will set you back $64 - worth it for the armchair escapism. After all, who would profane a glass of Sancerre with cocktail sauce? Prices range from $3.75 each to $41 a dozen. With the foregoing descriptions in mind, try only to add a squeeze of lemon or a drizzle of mignonette, a classic oyster accompaniment of red wine vinegar, shallot and cracked black pepper. In typical fashion, the bivalves are brought to you nestled into an icy tray with a few condiments and a convenient tag listing names. Sweetheart Creek oysters from MA, for example, are “sweet and buttery … with a smooth, silky texture, vegetal notes and a crisp, metallic finish.” The menu there describes oysters as though they were bottles of wine. The outdoor setting also makes it a perfect pandemic hangout, and as a result I’ve been there twice in the past couple of months. All were $3.75 each with a half-dozen priced at $21, a dozen chef’s choice at $39 and a dozen of your choice at $42.īuilding on this success, the Silo management, which also operates Silo Prime and Nonna in the Fairmount Hotel, recently launched an oyster bar on the Fairmount roof - a venue worth seeking out if only for its sophisticated urban feel. True trigger or not, on an early December Saturday the restaurant, with its breezy, elevated outdoor terrace, was offering a choice of seven - from Massachusetts, Maine and Prince Edward Island. To boot, one of the city’s best raw sources is at now at the offshoot Silo Terrace Oyster Bar on Interstate 10. The dish is still on the menu there and at Bliss, the restaurant he later founded in Southtown. Humor me here, but I’m thinking that it’s not a total accident that Mark Bliss’ chicken-fried oysters made an early and noteworthy appearance when he was in charge of the kitchen at Silo on Austin Highway. Still soldiering on is the eponymous Ostra at the Mokara Hotel & Spa on the River Walk, where a dozen chilled oysters on the half shell will set you back $28 - a relative bargain by today’s standards.Īll that said, the current bivalve surge might well have been set in motion by a Texas-inspired fried rendition. The Alamo City has reaped the benefit of that availability for a while, as evidenced by now-shuttered oyster purveyors including Jason Dady’s Shuck Shack (scheduled to reopen in late 2020), Andrew Weissman’s Sandbar and Luke, where 50-cent happy hour Gulf oysters were a compelling draw. There’s been excellent, country-wide seafood availability ever since the advent of modern air freight - think of those classic towers with their tiered displays of crab claws, shrimp and oysters. The newest, helmed by a woman at that, opened in early December. Whoever the oyster-eating OG might have been, their progeny have grown up to be diehard connoisseurs, a phenomenon that can be witnessed even in inland outposts such as San Antonio where we’re experiencing a veritable tidal surge in oyster bars. There are many versions of the following quote, which is attributed to Jonathan Swift: “He was a bold man who first ate an oyster.” None, as far as I know, suggest that that first shucker and slurper could have been a woman, so let’s add that to the stew for the record. Southerleigh at the Pearl offers outdoor seating and a chance to pair oysters with beer.
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