Slurping toward Annapolis: A guide to hidden oysters in Maryland’s capital

Jerry Hardesty was ahead of the curve.

In 1968, the young entrepreneur leased a historic building in downtown Annapolis and restored its Colonial-era name, Middleton Tavern. It was still a blue-collar town, just awakening to its potential to attract charm-seeking tourists and millionaires with a hunger for waterfront homes.

Hardesty soon added something most certainly not served to George Washington — the oyster shooter.

It’s a simple concept, really. Drop a raw oyster into a shot glass of cocktail sauce, slurp it down and chase it with a small, cold beer.

“Jerry claimed to develop it, although he quite possibly saw something similar in his travels,” said Jan Hardesty, the late restaurateur’s ex-wife.

“His oyster shooter was touted as a ‘freshly shucked oyster,’ which they did in front of the customer as part of the presentation. The sauce he developed is similar to a cocktail sauce but more drinkable.”

The drink — Is it a drink? Is it an appetizer? Is it a dare? — comes with tips on how to “flick” the glass around until the oyster and its liquor mix into the sauce. Then you toss it back in a way that swishes the contents over the tongue for a taste of the Chesapeake Bay. It even came with its own slogan, available on T-shirts, “Shuck and sauce’em, Suck and toss’em.”

“Swallowing whole was not encouraged as horseradish could burn out the tonsils,” Hardesty said.

Today, you can find an oyster shooter in plenty of Annapolis bars and restaurants — and plenty of them are quite good. But how many come with their own origin story?

And what other dish is so uniquely tied to the history of Maryland’s state capital?

At one point there were 25 oyster-processing shacks on its shores, and watermen kept the town afloat in the years after its colonial luster faded. The city is a good place to explore oysters, for the uninitiated and the experienced.

Hardesty’s claim to having invented the shooter has its doubters. Some accounts put the origin in the California Gold Rush, when a saloon owner might have wanted to charge more for an oyster or disguise one past its prime.

“Yeah, I know. There’s a lot he claimed to invent,” said Bob Jones, co-owner of the Point Crab House & Grill in Arnold.

Doubts aside, Jones acknowledged that Hardesty knew what he was doing with oysters. Middleton Tavern, which faces City Dock, was the vanguard of a new era for Annapolis as a destination.

The indomitable oyster, in a town with shell-paved roads buried beneath its streets, naturally went along for the ride.

“What’s a good oyster?” Jones asked. “That’s like saying, ‘Which is your favorite kid.’”

Jones keeps a mix of oysters on the menu this time of year, from plump sweet ones hauled from the middle reaches of the Chesapeake — fritters, stews, baked or roasted — to saltier versions from Virginia or Maine waters that are tasty on the half shell.

You can find the ubiquitous platter of half shells, along with unique dishes, at many locally owned restaurants.

They range from fancy at Harry Browne’s (roasted with chorizo, mozzarella and garlic butter), O’Leary’s Seafood (sautéed in Thai red chili sauce) and Carroll’s Creek (baked with horseradish, bacon and cheddar) to casual at Boatyard Bar & Grill (11 oyster dishes are on the menu, including reimagined shooters), McGarvey’s Saloon and Oyster Bar (fried and served with remoulade), Sailor Oyster Bar (chowder) and the seafood bar at Market House (Chesapeake/Thai fusion stew).

There are other places, too, but none like Wild Country Seafood.

You have to look hard for the oyster shell driveway leading to this tiny spot, tucked behind the Annapolis Maritime Museum in Eastport. You could spend an hour at the museum, learning about the history of Annapolis and the oyster, then pop next door to Wild Country Seafood for a fried oyster sandwich or a plate of fritters — or take home a dozen still in their shells or shucked for your own shooters.

All of them, marketed as Patty’s Fatty’s, come from 40 acres of leased bottom in the Rhode River in Shady Side. Started by Pat Mahoney Sr. and now run by his son, Pat Mahoney Jr., the farm produces oysters that can be found at restaurants around Annapolis.

Wild Country Seafood is the last shop in Annapolis where a waterman prepares and sells what he harvests directly to customers. There are a few picnic tables out front and a smattering of fish and mussels along with the oysters in refrigerator cases inside.

“They are pretty mild,” said David White, who works in the shop and on Mahoney’s boats. “They’re a big oyster, and they’re fat.”

This season, thanks to weather conditions, Patty’s Fatty’s oysters are also a little bit saltier than normal. No matter how you like them, the shop shifts most of its focus to crabs starting in April.

For a fritter, White will shuck eight Patty’s Fatty’s, dropping them into a tray of seasoned meal where a quick roll turns the liquor into a thin batter. He’ll quick fry them, turn them out into a paper-lined basket and hand them over to you with a wedge of lemon and cocktail sauce.

If locally sourced food is best, oysters might not get any better than this in Annapolis.

A contender is coming, though. Annapolis Oyster Co. owner Phil Plack is raising 1.5 million oysters on Severn River bottom leased near the mouth of Weems Creek, making it the only Annapolis oyster farm.

“No one has raised or harvested oysters in the Severn River for a very long time,” he said. “But there is a market in the Annapolis area.”

The farm is in its fourth growing season but only its first selling oysters to consumers. Most sales are direct to individual customers, with orders coming over the phone, its website and even social media accounts. Buyers tell Plack how they plan to serve oysters, and he points them to the right sizes. They pick them up by the box full.

Little by little, his oysters are showing up in Annapolis restaurants, including Leo Annapolis (broiled in sausage-chili butter, then topped with parsley, garlic and lime), Forward Brewing (chipotle oyster stew) and on the half shell at Boatyard as Severn Selects.

“They have a creamy savory flavor, with a clean shell and a deep cup and a mild brine,” Plack said. “We’re aiming for the half-shell market. Our goal is to create a very consistent product that both looks good and tastes great.”

If you’ve had your fill of oysters, there’s one last stop in Annapolis to consider.

Graphic artist Kim Hovell wanted a painting of an oyster for her home in Fells Point but couldn’t find the abstract, color image she had in her head.

So she painted it herself.

Twelve years later, Kim Hovell Fine Art on Main Street sells exactly what she was looking for and more. There are oyster paintings — energetic slashes of bright whites and grays mixed with pinks, greens and blues — prints, tablecloths, barware, wallpaper, blankets, candles and pillows.

“I realized it was kind of a missing piece of the market,” Hovell said. “I try to focus on the art, but it’s fun to do things with it.”

Today, she lives in Annapolis and her designs are in 400 galleries and shops around the region. She’s started sourcing materials and manufacturing to set the stage for wider, national distribution. Although she is working on bay grass collections and has dabbled in sailboat designs, she keeps coming back to the oyster.

“I’m pushing it as far to the abstract as people are comfortable with,” Hovell said.

It’s been more than a century since the Annapolis waterfront began the change from oyster shacks to luxury homes, and 22 years since the last working waterman was pushed out of his slip to make way for more leisure boats.

One door closes and another opens. Annapolis is a center of the environmental effort to restore Chesapeake oysters depleted by years of disease, pollution and overharvesting.

The Oyster Recovery Partnership is a major part of it, recycling shells from all those restaurants. Empty trucks leave its headquarters in the morning, and full trucks return every afternoon, unloading shells to be washed and sent out for use as a base for new oyster beds and the powerful cleansing effect they have on Chesapeake water quality.

“Most of the oysters being eaten in Annapolis today were planted two or three years ago by ORP,” Paul Schurick, director of partnerships for the nonprofit, wrote in an email.

I know of no memorials to the age of watermen in Annapolis, except one — the oyster itself. It’s kind of fitting, if you remember that we almost lost it.

So find an oyster shooter and raise a toast to Crassostrea virginica, the eastern oyster. It’s an Annapolis treasure hiding right in front of us.

Just don’t forget to swish it around and chew a bit before you swallow.

Rick Hutzell

rick.hutzell@thebaltimorebanner.com

Rick Hutzell is the Annapolis columnist for The Baltimore Banner. He writes about what's happening today, how we got here and where we're going next. The former editor of Capital Gazette, he led the newspaper to a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 2018 mass shooting in its newsroom.

More from Rick Hutzell

7 things to do: Annapolis show opens the Chesapeake boating season

Apr 25, 2024

Study finds Maryland journalism is struggling. Not news, but maybe progress.

Apr 23, 2024

More From The Banner

Suspect in Pikesville AI case set off red flags before racist recording spread

Errors in Nick Mosby’s latest fundraising report raise even more questions

Map, dive, cut, lift: An inside look at the Key Bridge salvage strategy

A Bethesda-based peace activist is charged with being a would-be revolutionary in Africa