Lemony oysters in time for holiday season
MARENNES, France — A French seafood farmer is proposing lemon-flavored oysters this holiday season, a delicacy he perfected after four years of trial-and-error experiments in his garage.
Joffrey Dubault, 29, also offers oysters flavored with shallots, another perennial accompaniment usually served finely chopped and floating in vinegar.
“It was pretty discouraging at first when I had to throw out 90 percent,” the lanky oyster farmer said, a baseball cap shielding his blue eyes. “Now I have a 95 percent success rate.”
The process, which Dubault has patented, involves plunging the oysters into a tank of seawater laced with lemon extract for between two and 12 hours.
The oysters naturally pump the water through sievelike gills, becoming impregnated with the flavor.
The technique may seem simple, but “there are 16 steps to the process, and if any one of them isn’t done correctly the result is failure”, said Dubault, who farms 40 metric tons of the bivalves each year off Marennes, France’s oyster capital on the west coast.
Dubault, who said he got the idea from customers at his market stall constantly asking him to throw in a lemon along with their purchase, began marketing the pre-flavored oysters in October and has found buyers from Belgium to Hong Kong.
He won recognition for his invention at a seafood trade fair in Brussels in April when he said Chinese visitors conaged gratulated him, saying they had been attempting a similar feat for seven years.
The nod in Brussels encour- Dubault to set up his company, called So’ooh, to market the novelty.
Targeting Asian clients, he has created a ginger version, while oysters flavored with muscatel, the sweet fortified wine, are aimed at the Italian palate.
Next year, he plans to add grapefruit and mirabelle plum to his flavor menu.
“People have asked me to add chocolate, but I say no way,” he said.
Of all his customers, the French are the hardest to win over, he said, calling them “purists”. But he is hopeful, having recently signed on with a major supermarket chain.
“People eat flavored yogurts and drink flavored water, so why not oysters?” he said.