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Finding Oyster Bliss With Andressa Costa
A raw bar takes a party up a notch. Oysters take the raw bar up a notch. But an intelligent, poised, powerful woman bringing the oysters to you and shucking them while you watch? That makes a party.
Andressa Costa, founder of Oyster Bliss, has been shucking oysters for about a decade — growing up in inland Brazil, she was never exposed to this kind of culinary experience.
It all started when she went to her husband’s hometown in Alabama and attended her first oyster party. “We’d get Apalachicola oysters and put them in a cooler,” Costa recalls, “and we’d all sit around in a circle, drinking and talking, eating oysters and playing music.”
It was a lovely scene, but Costa realized there weren’t a lot of people shucking. Never one to shy away from a challenge, she tried to learn then and there, and found it was really difficult.
“It takes patience to learn the technique,” she said. “A lot of people think it’s about power, but it’s not. Shucking an oyster is more patience than power.”
When they came back to New York, Costa’s agent from her modeling agency (oh, she’s beautiful too) asked her about her holiday. She told her about her oyster shucking, and soon she found herself shucking oysters at high-end events in the city.
When Costa and her husband moved to Sag Harbor, they discovered a community of amateur oyster farmers. They started hosting casual gatherings in the style of the Alabama family, with music and drinks and, of course, an abundance of oysters. Costa did the shucking.
She started to realize that serving oysters was a fusion of her skills: her love of connecting with people, her thirst for knowledge, her appreciation of the natural world, and her now-masterful shucking chops. She had tried other businesses before and considers herself to have an entrepreneurial spirit, but Oyster Bliss came into being organically.
Last summer, she thought she’d launch slow: maybe four or five events. She ended up being totally booked every weekend. That’s because practically every party she worked, someone else decided to hire her.
“I walk around with the oysters on me,” she explains. In practice, that means she wears a belt with several containers: one for oysters, one for sauces, and one for shells.
“I am shucking on the spot,” she said. “So you are entering my oyster world. It’s not only you eating oysters, but having a conversation with me and learning about oysters. Trying my sauces, opening yourself up to something new.” She’s had many first-time oyster eaters, because even though they never wanted to try them before, they want to be part of the experience.
This is no pig in a blanket passed hors d’oeuvre — it’s in another league.
“When you go to an oyster bar, you’re not seeing the person,” she says. “When I walk around with the oysters, and I shuck them, you experience the hard work of an oyster shucker. It’s almost like a performance. I give a three-second performance for each person at the gathering.” Sometimes those three seconds evolve into five minutes, because there are so many ways for the interaction to go.
Costa feels as comfortable talking about the positive environmental impact that oysters have on local waters as she does talking about the (unproven) aphrodisiac qualities of the oyster.
She marvels at the way oysters bring people together, and the powerful health benefits of these zinc-loaded bivalves.
And don’t get her started on the quest for the pearl, because even though she is yet to find one in her many oyster-cracking missions, she is always game for a treasure hunt. It’s harvest season, and the farms are as bountiful as the seas. One of the most precious things about life on the East End this time of year is how close we can get to the source.
“Most of the events I do, the farmers harvest the oysters the same day I’m shucking,” Costa says. “They go to the bay in the morning to pick up the oysters, and I get them hours later.
Those oysters are freshly coming out of the bay, as is. And then I present the oyster in front of you, as is, as organic as you can get. And I’m like, ‘OK, let’s see what’s inside.’”
Learn more about Oyster Bliss at Andressa Costa’s website, oysterbliss.com, or follow her on Instagram @oysterblisshampton.
By Emily Weitz on Oct 13, 2022 for Sag Harbor Express Magazine