October 06, 2024
‘Oyster sommelier’ is now a job, thanks to this new oyster-education program
Two bivalve experts have pried open a whole new line of work for the hospitality industry.
When Jeremy Benson approaches a restaurant table as a sommelier, he’s prepared to talk about what you might expect: flavor profile, geography, terroir, and mouthfeel. Sometimes, he takes down a map from the wall to illustrate the origin of different varietals from across the globe.
But Benson, general manager of New York City’s Crave Fishbar, is not imparting advice about wine. He’s been summoned to talk about, well, oysters. He’s one of the first people in the world to obtain a Level 2 Oyster Specialist certification from the newly created Oyster Master Guild. In January, he hopes to become the world’s first official oyster sommelier.
Julie Qiu cofounded Oyster Master Guild (OMG) last year with Patrick McMurray, a restaurateur, inventor, and culinary educator, who holds three Guinness Book Records for oyster shucking (for one, he shucked 1,114 oysters in one hour). Qiu is an international oyster expert and educator, founder of the oyster-focused website, In a Half Shell, and author of 33 Oysters on the Half Shell.
Based in New York City, OMG is a for-profit oyster-education company dedicated to creating better oyster experiences through education and by cultivating a community of oyster stewards. The professional certification program, which OMG launched last summer, is meant to fill a gap Qiu and McMurray see in the restaurant industry. “This is the first time this has been done,” says Qiu, explaining that “in the business of oysters, knowledge is power. Having this training unlocks meaningful earning potential as an employee, entrepreneur, or foodservice leader.”
Becoming an oyster sommelier
McMurray and Qiu met in 2014 at the Galway International Oyster Festival and found themselves stumped by the lack of formal education around oysters. “Customers were always asking, ‘What’s the difference between this one and that one?’ And to answer, you just learned on the job,” McMurray says. “There are five different species of oyster in North America alone, [but] there was never a course on oysters, their history, or proper shucking technique. It was all self-taught.”
Qiu wanted to move the conversation beyond “Is this West Coast or East Coast?” toward the larger topic of oyster farming and sustainability, which was lost without an oyster steward in the restaurant to serve as a guide for diners. “When you visit oyster farms and see these amazing places where the oysters tastes like where they come from, you feel this connection to the people producing this beautiful food,” she says. “These stories were not being told.”
The two decided to create a syllabus that was modeled loosely on the world of wine education. “The way we talk about oysters and wine is so similar, so we thought of a sommelier, a term that people understand,” Qiu says.
Oyster Master Guild launched in the summer of 2023 with two education tracks. Its trademarked Certified Oyster Sommelier program is geared for those who aspire to be oyster gurus—highly knowledgeable about provenance, production, seasonality, and flavor profile—and are able to evaluate, source, and curate oysters for a menu, in conjunction with a chef and wine sommelier or a beverage director.
The second professional track, Certified Oyster Shucker, is geared toward those eager to hone their skills behind the raw bar, shucking and plating oysters cleanly and efficiently. Lest this sound like an easy task, McMurray emphasizes that shucking technique is far more than just wedging open a shell; it can make or break the guest’s experience. “If your shucker lobs off the top of the oyster you don’t get it all, and you don’t get the flavor or what you are paying for,” he says. Plus, a proper shuck is also a way to pay respect to the farmer. “A typical grower has spent years growing the oyster, and you tear it apart with your oyster knife and you ruin that story, too.”
Both tracks involve two levels of online coursework plus hands-on work that involves shucking lots of oysters: 40,000 for the shuckers track and 5,000 for aspiring sommeliers. There is field work, too—visiting oyster farms, hosting tastings, working at an oyster bar— and a 100-question written exam plus a skills presentation that functions as a practical exam. It includes perfectly opening a dozen oysters (3 varieties, 2 species each) while being peppered with questions from Qiu and McMurray—just like ones from a diner in a restaurant. “You need to know how to describe each kind [of oyster],” says McMurray. “We want to see how your station looks and the final product of the plate.”
A career boost on the half shell
The total cost for the full range of coursework is $1,685, with a sliding scale for food service teams. Qiu says it can take anywhere from 4 to 12 months to achieve the Sommelier Certification, largely due to the shucking requirement. “As an estimate, if you take on 10 catering gigs where you open 500 oysters, that would likely happen in a season or two, depending on where you’re located. The Level 3 coursework would take 14 to 16 hours to complete.
To date, nearly 200 students from 16 countries have enrolled in one of OMG’s certification programs. They include staffers from some 35 restaurants across the U.S.—such as Oyster House in Philadelphia; Scales Restaurant in Portland, Maine; Locals Seafood in North Carolina, and Mink in Detroit—and some nonculinary enthusiasts, too, such as Jason Murbarger, a priest from South Daytona, Florida, who has a passion for food and travel.
Dave Seigal, executive chef of New York’s Cull & Pistol Oyster Bar in Chelsea Market and its adjacent seafood market The Lobster Place, says he is eager to hire OMG-certified staff for his restaurants, part of LP Hospitality Group. “Anyone who has an OMG certification would automatically leapfrog over other candidates for raw bar front-of-house staff,” he says. “When our staff is well-informed as to the origin and flavor nuances of each oyster, they are better positioned to sell more oysters and improve the bottom line.”
At Crave Fishbar, Benson’s certification has already had an impact. Like a sommelier curating a wine list, Benson has developed a deep oyster roster that spans beyond the typical Malpecs, Bluepoints, Wellfleets, and Kumamotos, reaching up to the cold waters of Maine’s Damariscotta River for Salty Mariners and down to Virginia’s salty Mobjack Bay for Wavelengths.
Plus, it’s not bad for business,” he says. The certification gives you some level of authority.” The way a fine-dining restaurant has a sommelier to show you that you can get a great bottle of wine, this certification says, ‘You will have a different experience; you will have fun, you will taste amazing oysters, and you will learn something too.”
Meeting a growing young market
The OMG program is debuting at an opportune time; the global oyster market is forecasted to grow from $8.25 billion in 2024 to $10.29 billion by 2031, according to Metastatinsight.
A recent IMARC Group analysis also shows that consumer demand for premium oysters is on the rise. So is a general appreciation for locally sourced seafood overall.
“Demand is being fueled by millennial and Gen Z populations who have gotten hooked on raw bars,” says David Branch, seafood sector manager for the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute. It’s “not only for taste and as a lifestyle,” he says—though there’s effortless glamour in an icy tray of shellfish and a bone dry martini—but because oysters “have a positive impact on the environment.” (He points to recent studies by the Food Distribution Research Society and Circana on consumer behaviors presented at this year’s Global Seafood Market Conference.) “Research shows that these groups focus a lot more on sustainability.”
Public education around the positive impact of oysters on the environment has been increasing, thanks to nonprofits like the Billion Oyster Project, which has spent the past 10 years working to restore oyster reefs in the New York Harbor to help clean the water, provide reef habitat for hundreds of species, and protect the city’s shorelines from storm damage. Oysters filter water as they grow, clearing upwards of 50 gallons a day; they require zero fertilizer, store carbon in their shells, and help remediate harmful nutrients.
(Note that unlike oysters bred for filtration, the ones you find at a raw bar are typically from very high-quality water and may also undergo purification, called “depuration,” a process that eliminates potential pathogens before they go to market. “Until New York City can get their sewage management plan under control, we will likely not be able to eat oysters from the New York City area,” says Qiu.)
The certification can build confidence in the safety of a restaurant’s raw bar program. “We were able to bounce back [after the vibrio scare] in no small part to the information shared with me by OMG on how to assuage the fears of our guests,” Benson told me, which was that “if you’re nervous about contamination, make sure to get your oysters from a place you trust, and the farther north oysters are grown, the lower the risks.”
It can help customers feel better about spending upwards of $4 for one briny slurp since, like most food products, oysters have seen price increases driven by inflation, labor costs, and the impacts of climate change. (Oyster prices are not quite as high as they were post-pandemic when they reached $114/gallon of shucked oysters, but they’re still not cheap at $84/gallon.)
The program is also meaningful for families of growers across the country and into the bays, oceans, and rivers where oysters are bred. “As farmers, being able to tell our story to the end consumer is so important,” says Shina Wysocki, a second-generation farmer at Chelsea Farms in Olympia, Washington—known for what an oyster sommelier might describe as “estate-grown tide-tumbled oysters.” “To connect the oyster with the bay it was grown in makes the food experience richer,” Wysocki explains. “Having people who can accurately describe our farm, and have the oyster presented beautifully shucked, is so valuable to us.”
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