Chris Armstrong is a man proud of his work. “They don’t come much better than me,” he said when I was bellied up to his bar, at the Grand Isle restaurant in New Orleans. It was an off hour, and as I mowed down a duck debris po’ boy, he was setting up for his night’s shift. Calmly, he got his ice, got his rhythm going on a couple dozen he brought back into the kitchen for the cooks. He worked with power, popping off shell lids and letting them fall.
Watching him, I recalled my days working the cold line at a restaurant. I sucked at shucking. When tickets came in with oysters, I’d start running for cover; a half-dozen could take me that many minutes. I finally learned how to read the shell, how to take the angle it gave me, how to aim for a soft spot and feel for the resistance that said I had enough blade inside to get leverage. Then I started to look forward to oyster orders, taking each ticket as a chance to practice, a chance to decipher some more shells.
Chris Armstrong worked like he had long ago forgotten what it was like to have to think about what the oyster said to him. Louisiana oysters, in the beginning of the season, being just a little too small for the last harvest and having a year to grow since then, are monsters. Big, thick old rocks. I tried my hand at opening some of them the other day, and I literally worked up a sweat. I quit when the palm of my hand showed a bright red circle from the knife handle crushing into it. Armstrong—a perfect name—cracked his way through his pile. His strength was clear, but controlled. “It’s gotta look good, gotta look presentable,” he said. “You can’t have the meat all cut up.”
First he gave them a tap or two with his knife. You do that to make sure there’s no hollow sound, he told me—that sound means they’re dry inside and not worth bothering with. He tossed one that wasn’t to his liking. He opened the next, letting the liquid splash out; these oysters packed so much liquor you couldn’t keep it all in the shell. “You gotta look at that water,“ he said, “the color.“ It’s milky early on, getting grayer as the weather gets colder and the oysters become brinier, saltier.
He could tell by this point that I was watching his work with interest, and he was happy to indulge me (and himself). He started talking about the contest he won, shucking 14 dozen in 10 minutes. Then, to punctuate his story, he took the next oyster off his pile and held it in his free hand. He turned around, his hands now behind his back, and jigged the tip of his knife to find the hinge. Pop. The liquor ran out gray.
Pop, pop, pop. Every few minutes he swung his arms like a swimmer practicing his butterfly stroke, as if his bright white coat was too tight for his massive fullback’s frame, and got back to working his pile. “I’ve been doing this for 13 years,” he said. “I’m a master shucker. I don’t consider what I do work. What I do is art.”
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