Some of the city’s most prominent restaurateurs will open two new oyster bars before the end of the year.
Husband-and-wife team Patrick Phelan and Megan Fitzroy Phelan’s are racing to open Lillian Oyster Hall in Scott’s Addition “before the holidays.” Lillian will offer a variety of oysters from Virginia up to Canada and down to the Gulf, plus dishes like caviar, stone crab and pickled shrimp.
Grisette and Jardin owner Donnie Glass has partnered with longtime Grisette bar manager Elias Adams to open Beaucoup in the old Commercial Taphouse space. Beaucoup will feature a robust cocktail list, dollar oysters and all the laid-back charm Glass and his team are known for.
“I saw a hole in the market,” says Glass. “I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Patrick and I are opening similar concepts.”
From a record-setting 2022-2023 wild oyster harvest to a steady growth of thriving young oyster farms, there seems to be something in the water. We decided it was high time to explore the allure of the Virginia oyster—and the evergreen appeal of the local raw bars that shuck and serve them.
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By design
Although not a coastal city, Richmond has long boasted a robust raw bar scene.
There’s Rappahannock and East Coast Provisions, Hard Shell and Birdie’s. You can certainly snag a dozen at any of the Boathouse locations or Bookbinders. Acacia and Odyssey opened within the last year, serving both local and far-flung oysters roasted and on the half-shell.
“What we are seeing regionally—and nationally—is that the oyster industry has grown and it’s growing in two ways: there are more producers coming in, and the current producers are producing more,” says Bill Walton, Acuff Professor of Marine Science and Shellfish Aquaculture program coordinator at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS).
Walton and his team of VIMS researchers use scientific data to help Virginia oyster farmers in a variety of ways, from addressing mortality issues to breeding out disease to looking at how farms can maximize growth in a responsible way.
“We work to give communities the best information we can,” says Walton. “Another goal is to increase consumer demand for Virginia farm-raised shellfish. There’s no doubt Virginia produces world-class oysters.”
As if the new, multi-million-dollar, 22,000 square-foot Acuff Center were not evidence enough of the booming regional oyster industry, perhaps the recent success of Gloucester, Virginia-based farm, Matheson Oyster Co., may be a convincing case in point.
“We just reached our one year-selling anniversary a couple of weeks ago,” says founder Sarah Matheson Harris. In that time, the Matheson crew has expanded from Sarah, husband Eric and brother-in-law Cory to include two full-time employees, two part-time employees and a slew of high school summer interns.
Matheson’s slightly sweet, slightly salty Mobjack Bay oysters are now on menus from Texas to New York to Birmingham, as well as Richmond restaurants like Birdie’s, Brenner Pass and The Stables.
In addition to their flagship farm, Matheson Harris says they’ve added a new, more protected location that is “just shy of one million square feet.” This additional property has allowed Matheson to expand its product offerings—they now have their signature Wavelength (3-3.5”), a larger oyster meant for roasting and a line of petites.
Walton, who has personally worked with Matheson and company, admits that their growth curve is “steep.”
“When I started my shellfish aquaculture career in New England there were lots of small mom-and-pop farms,” says Walton. “When I went down to the Gulf of Mexico and then when I came to Virginia, I found that farms were starting to look at the big picture: ‘How do I build a successful business?’”
Walton says that when the aquaculture industry is booming, the net benefits affect more than just the families running the farms.
There are the environmental benefits. Oysters act as natural water filters, clearing the water in which they grow so that an entire ecosystem may thrive around them, from Chesapeake Bay seagrass to fish and crabs.
There’s the positive economic impact: more oyster farms growing more oysters means more jobs. It also means more oysters in the marketplace, more restaurants sourcing locally or regionally produced bivalves and more diners keeping their money in the community.
Glass says that at Beaucoup, just like at Jardin and Grisette, they plan to keep a “very intentional closed food economy.” They’ll be sourcing direct from Virginia oyster farmers when they can, cutting out the middleman so that when the check is written, even if the price is the same, “the farmer makes more money.”
Walton and the folks at VIMS, while not advocates for any one method of aquaculture farming or for any specific oyster farms, are advocates for education in the oyster industry, including the front-of-house staff at shellfish-centric restaurants.
VIMS, through a partnership with charitable organization Oyster South, offers free training for restaurants to help servers answer customer questions about oysters. These may range from queries about the “R” months rule to the flavor profile—salty, briny, mild, sweet, etc.— of a particular oyster.
“Educated consumers are better consumers,” says Walton. “When the restaurant does well, the chef and owners do well, the servers are getting better tips and the customer is having a better dining experience.”
Beyond the environmental and economic benefits of shellfish aquaculture, there’s also the cultural impact.
Matheson’s two oyster farms are located deep in an area of Gloucester called Guinea, a community that has been tied to the working waterfront since the 1700s.
“When people are doing a job that builds off of the water versus, say, working in warehouse for a web delivery company, it really helps define that area and what makes a place special,” says Walton. “Shellfish aquaculture is one way to keep people working on the water, and I think that’s critical for our rural coastal communities.”
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Crassostrea virginica
Like most Virginia foodways, the story of Crassostrea virginica, the Virginia Oyster, begins not with the English colonists who settled in these coastal communities, but with the Native Americans and enslaved men and women who built them.
According to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture: “Archeological evidence indicates that for thousands of years, indigenous people usually harvested oysters in the same location.”
When the colonists arrived, they relied on the knowledge and expertise of Native Americans to continue harvesting this accessible and nutritious food source. In addition to indigenous labor, colonists forced enslaved fishermen to do the back-breaking job of using hand tongs to scrape up oysters from the bay bottom.
By the late 19th century, the Chesapeake Bay was home to the largest oyster harvesting industry in the world.
Inevitably, all of this oyster production and pollution would lead to the decline of naturally growing oyster beds. Shellfish were put under further duress in the 1950s when non-native microorganisms began to attack the Bay’s oysters.
It has taken decades to rehabilitate the once thriving wild Virginia oyster population. But things are looking up, thanks in large part to a growing aquaculture industry, says Mike Hutt, executive director of the Virginia Marine Products Board.
“Virginia is the top oyster producer on the East Coast,” says Hutt. “The aquaculture industry has taken the pressure off the wild oysters, which has allowed the grass beds to re-grow. We’ve had more natural spawn in the last few years than we’ve had in probably the last 20 years. The aquaculture industry has helped put Virginia back in the oyster business.”
The 2022-2023 oyster harvest was, according to the Chesapeake Bay foundation, the highest in 35 years.
These wild clusters—the craggier cousin to the finely tumbled farm-raised oyster—are still a highly sought-after product, often sold to shucking houses or to restaurants through wholesale distributors.
And although they may not have as a deep a cup or as firm a meat as some of their farm-raised counterparts, the wild oyster is coming from the same water, feasting on the same phytoplankton.
“We have the largest estuary in the United States with the Chesapeake Bay and all its tributaries,” says Hutt. “We’re sitting in a good place.”
A sea of possibilities
There may be no more significant marker of place than the oyster.
A Prince Edward Isle Raspberry Point has an entirely different flavor and texture than a Mobjack Bay Wavelength or a Puget Sound Kumamoto.
The salinity and temperature of the water in which it grows, the methods the farmer is using to train, tumble and shape it, the season in which it’s being harvested—whether it has been especially dry or especially rainy—are all factors that contribute to the taste of a single oyster, cracked open and slurped down in half a second.
“Virginia oysters are at the heart of Birdie’s menu,” says Common House GM Hannah Ragan. An all-day café, oyster bar and wine cellar located at the bottom of social club Common House, Birdie’s raw bar offerings skew heavily Old Dominion, representing an array of Virginia flavor profiles.
There are eight designated regions of the Chesapeake Bay, from the seaside to the Tidewater, with a varying sweetness, salinity and creaminess assigned to the oysters grown in each body of water.
“I give all credit to our chef de cuisine Hunter Garvin,” says Ragan of Birdie’s impressive, homegrown oyster list. “He’s been working with Virginia seafood purveyors for years. The oyster guy comes through our front doors with bags of oysters.”
This direct oyster farm to chef relationship has grown in the last decade, says Odyssey chef/owner Bobo Catoe. “I get people coming into Odyssey trying to sell to me from their farm. This is something that never would’ve happened 10 or 12 years ago.”
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Odyssey is currently selling Virginia’s Little Wicomico Peachtree oysters, roasted—“We always serve Virginia oysters,” says Catoe—alongside raw shucked Washington state and Prince Edward Isle varieties.
Part of the beauty of today’s thriving oyster economy is that there are so many really good, really different oysters being grown by talented, innovative farmers that there is room in the marketplace for six Virginia oysters on the menu, plus six oysters from other states and regions.
Walton says that the increase in oyster production and oyster variety has only increased a demand for raw bars and seafood-focused restaurants, from the coast to inland cities like Richmond, Atlanta, Las Vegas and St. Louis.
“When you go out to eat and there is one variety of oyster on the menu a diner may say, ‘OK, I’ll get these, you get the chicken,’” explains Walton. “But when there are half a dozen varieties, now a table will get a whole platter, and each diner will get a couple of each variety and suddenly you are having a very different dining experience.”
In the oyster world, there is no paradox of choice. More is simply more.
For Catoe—he’s worked at top tier restaurants including McCrady’s and Husk in Charleston and Heritage, Southbound and Alewife in Richmond—Odyssey, “is an opportunity to sell other stuff [in addition to Virginia oysters],” that he’s personally drawn to and excited about.
And a Prince Edward Isle Savage Blond on the half-shell is an objectively wonderful specimen.
Phelan says that at Lillian they plan to serve a “wide” variety of oysters for dinner Tuesday to Sunday and all day (11 a.m.- 10 p.m.) Friday-Sunday. The restaurant’s beautifully crafted 51-foot bar will seat 23 guests, and a smattering of standing tables along the perimeter will invite guests, Phelan hopes, to “breeze in get a cocktail and a dozen oysters.”
“That’s what I love about a raw bar,” says Phelan. “Maybe you’re there 30 minutes, maybe you’re there three hours.”
