{"id":236024,"date":"2025-09-18T09:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T09:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/236024\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T09:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T09:21:13","slug":"why-theres-a-raw-bar-boom-in-philly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/236024\/","title":{"rendered":"Why there’s a raw bar boom in Philly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beneath Little Water\u2019s<\/a> tin ceiling, precise platters of oysters emerge from a raw bar whose walls are bedecked with Capiz shell bowls. You don\u2019t have much choice in the matter, other than ordering what\u2019s listed on the menu merely as \u201coysters.\u201d <\/p>\n

You may add golden osetra caviar or Maine uni to these oysters for an additional charge, but otherwise, you are prescribed six deep-cupped Beau Soleil oysters from New Brunswick, Canada, and they will be dressed with Little Water\u2019s Alabama white sauce, nestled in pellet ice on a gleaming copper platter, and served with a tiny vial of chef Randy Rucker\u2019s housemade hot sauce.<\/p>\n

Some of Philadelphia\u2019s most exciting dishes right now aren\u2019t cooked at all. Raw bars are seemingly everywhere. Case in point: Sao<\/a>, Phila and Rachel Lorn\u2019s sophomore restaurant on East Passyunk; nearby Tesiny<\/a>, an oyster-focused bar with lush velvet seating by Biedermans\u2019 Lauren Biederman; and the enormous Fleur\u2019s<\/a> in Kensington with George Sabatino at its helm have all opened within moments of one another. And that\u2019s just the class of 2025. <\/p>\n

Last year also saw a spate of oyster bar openings. From Little Water in Rittenhouse to Jaffa Bar and Picnic in Fishtown, First Daughter Oyster Co<\/a>. in Old City, Oltremare in Rittenhouse, and the new Oyster House at PHL<\/a>, Philadelphians now have endless bivalve options.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been slouching toward a raw bar Renaissance for the last few years, with the openings of Loch Bar in October 2023, Michael Schulson\u2019s Pearl & Mary in November 2022 and Wilder in March 2022. More restaurants are also building out raw bar sections of the menus and of their dining rooms. Oysters reside on Honeysuckle\u2019s bar menu, on My Loup\u2019s seafood tower, rendered into fresh conservas at Heavy Metal Sausage and Oloroso. <\/p>\n

Why is everyone opening a raw bar right now? The reasons are somewhat complex: a union of changes in aquaculture, technological innovation that have made farmed oysters plentiful, and the individual longings of chefs and restaurateurs. Local oysters are aplenty, and the prices are reasonable, but oysters still feel luxurious.<\/p>\n

Oysters are once again surging in popularity, as Craig LaBan discovered last year, when covering the New Jersey oyster farm boom<\/a>, and mapping it against the surge of oyster farm production along the East Coast, from Maine to Florida.<\/p>\n

For chefs, the reasons to serve oysters are often entwined with their biographies. They\u2019re making careful departures from the typical dozen oysters served with lemon wedges, mignonette, and hot sauce. There\u2019s Rucker with his Alabama white sauce, of course. And Fleur\u2019s with Sabatino\u2019s thoughtful, produce-forward touches like watermelon mignonette for oysters on the half shell. Elsewhere on the menu, plum preserves and sour cherries and lime-spiked creme fraiche are deployed. Not what you\u2019d normally see on a raw bar menu.<\/p>\n

At Sao, where there are five to six varieties of oysters on rotation, served with horseradish, and a Lao sauce made with fish sauce, lime juice, shallots, Thai chilis, and cilantro stems, and Cambodian black pepper and lime, Phila and Rachel Lorn were prompted to make their pandemic dream of \u201cif Oyster House and Han Dynasty did a collaboration forever\u201d a reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the pandemic, people were reaching for luxuries. We realized that life is short and super fragile. Luxuries like caviar, seafood, peel and eat shrimp,\u201d said Phila.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of restaurants have oysters on the menu, but there\u2019s nothing like [a Southeast Asian raw bar] currently in South Philly. Oysters never go out of style,\u201d said Rachel. <\/p>\n

Behind the desire of chefs to serve their takes on oysters, there has been a confluence of tech and aquaculture, ensuring that supply meets demand.<\/p>\n

I asked Joe Lasprogata, the senior vice president of Samuels and Son Seafood, the largest seafood purveyor in our region, why he thought we are going through an oyster renaissance, despite rising costs of other types of seafood. <\/p>\n

\u201cSeafood in general is very expensive right now, and with imposed tariffs by the new administration, it might get even more expensive. Eighty-five percent of seafood is imported into the U.S.,\u201d he said. Oysters, on the other hand, are farmed rather than caught wild, and sourced domestically.<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, oyster beds were knocked out because of MSX \u2014 essentially an oyster plague \u2014 caused by a parasite called Haplosporidium nelsoni, decimating oyster populations in the Delaware Bay, Chesapeake Bay, and elsewhere. Dermo, another oyster disease that appeared contemporaneously, also destroyed oyster populations. In the ensuing two decades from over-harvesting and pollution run-off<\/a> killed even more oyster populations.<\/p>\n

These issues all hurt wild stocks of oysters in the late 20th century, leading to a significant dip in oyster consumption, but genetic advances in response to MSX and Dermo, have completely changed the industry, creating high-quality, disease-resistant oysters with shells that didn\u2019t easily shatter upon shucking.<\/p>\n

Another big reason behind a striking increase in oyster production? <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really made possible, oddly, by the invention of plastics. When I started growing oysters, we would paint chicken wire to get two years out of a cage before it rusted out. But then we had the inventions of vinyl coated wire and plastic mesh bags, which allowed us to grow oysters that didn\u2019t all get eaten by crabs,\u201d said Bob Rheault, the executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Technological advances continue to push the aquaculture oyster industry forward. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year it seems like there\u2019s another type of cage that has been developed and now we have floating gear, which bounces the animals around and makes them have a tougher shell. We\u2019ve learned to beat them up a little bit to toughen them up,\u201d said Rheault. The practice produces oysters that are easier to shuck without shattering.<\/p>\n

Rheault started Moonstone Oysters in Narragansett, R.I., back in 1986, when wild harvested oyster season started in October and would run until fishermen had fished out all the ones big enough to eat. In those days, the common guidance was to eat oysters only in months ending in \u201cr,\u201d as warmer waters could cause increased bacterial growth and they are also when wild oysters spawn (their flesh is considered less delicious and softer during spawning). This has become a defunct rule of thumb due to advances in refrigeration, disease-resistant oysters, and better controls over monitoring bacteria.<\/p>\n

The North American oyster aquaculture industry exploded between 2010 and 2015, bolstered by oysters\u2019 newer reputation for being good for people\u2019s health and for the planet. \u201cWe\u2019re improving water quality. Oysters are one of the most sustainable proteins and we don\u2019t need any drugs, chemicals, fertilizers, or antibiotics to raise them, and they feed themselves,\u201d said Rheault.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are now probably close to three hundred different aquaculture farms [in the Northeast] we can source product from,\u201d said Lasprogata. \u201cEven though the [plastics] technology had been developed since the late 70\u2019s, it wasn\u2019t until the early 2010s that production ramped up to a sustainable commercial scope. Our sales grew steadily from that point. <\/b>In 2024, we sold over 23 million pieces of shellfish \u2013 clams and oysters.\u201d <\/p>\n

This year, they\u2019re likely to sell even more, through supplying Philadelphia\u2019s new raw bars. Oysters are back. Just don\u2019t expect them to always come with just a lemon wedge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beneath Little Water\u2019s tin ceiling, precise platters of oysters emerge from a raw bar whose walls are bedecked…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":236025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,126757,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-236024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-oyster-bar-openings-aquaculture-sao-tesiny-fleurs-little-water","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115224568489218244","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}