DELRAY BEACH — Some of us may go through life enjoying oysters, but having never shucked one. But for the past 20 years, it’s been Mesguert Thomas’s full-time job. He’s cracked more than a million.
And while people many years younger than he are retiring, the 77-year-old has no intention of packing up the knife. He finds the teamwork and friendships forged in the kitchens of City Oyster & Sushi Bar in Delray Beach too valuable.
More importantly, “I like staying busy,” he said.
On average, the restaurant welcomes 500 patrons per day.
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Annually, City Oyster & Sushi serves more than a million oysters. On Jan. 1, the restaurant celebrated 25 years in business. The Atlantic Avenue seafood spot was just getting established in 2004 when Thomas came to work for them. He’d left Haiti for Florida only a year earlier.
Little did they know he’d become one of their longest-tenured employees.
Mastering his shell game
Thomas started as City Oyster’s dishwasher. A year later, then-chef Dennis Teixeira tapped Thomas as “ecailler,” an old French term for a professional seafood specialist, according to The Oyster Gourmet.
Thomas also includes among his responsibilities plating chilled seafood platters and creating stacked tiers filled with shaved ice, silvery bivalves, crab, shrimp and lobster.
In a corner of the kitchen, the compact septuagenarian works at a stainless steel table with shallow tubs of oysters, sorted by type from Blue Points to Well Fleets and WiAnnos, at his fingertips and a mountain of shaved ice at the ready.
City Oyster’s professional seafood specialist Mesguer Thomas is responsible for chilled seafood platters and creating stacked tiers filled with shaved ice, the silvery bivalves, shrimp and lobster.
Watching him work is mesmerizing. While many people can open a mollusk, “not everyone can open them without breaking them,” said Thomas.
Thomas grabs his specialty knife and gets to work, thrusting the tip into a corner of an oyster shell and flicking it. The Well Fleet’s shell pops off. He flips over the silvery mollusk and declares it ready for plating.
After cleaning, cooking and chilling, shrimp are brought to his station for platters. When lobster is included, it’s delivered whole for bisecting with a different type of knife.
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When lobsters are ordered for a shellfish tower, Mesguert Thomas bisects the crustacean for presentation.
Clams fall under Thomas’s purview, too.
In a job where cuts are common, Thomas has remained wound-free throughout his shelling career, attributing that status to maintaining his concentration.
Magic mountains of mollusks
Master of the shell game: At 77, Mesguert Thomas still works full-time at City Oyster. Here he’s plating a seafood platter.
On any given day, guests can select from several varieties, including the proprietary “Fishing Chef” oysters inspired by the restaurant’s executive chef, Jordan Stilley, and farmed by the Rappahannock Oyster Co.
Thomas plates the different oyster types clockwise in the precise order they were rung in, separating each variety with two lemon wedges.
This plating method allows a server to correctly identify the oysters upon presenting them to a guest, which is especially helpful if a patron orders a second round.
The secret to perfection, says Thomas, is waiting to shuck them until they’re ready to be eaten — and they must look as fresh as they taste.
According to City Oyster’s general manager, Dan Sobey: “He has perfected the art of shucking an oyster to ensure that not one bit of flavor is lost.”
Diana Biederman is the Palm Beach Post’s food & restaurant writer, fresh from two years at the Naples Daily News. She worked in a restaurant where a shucker new to the shell game sliced his fingertip off. If you have any news tips about the local dining scene, please send them to dbiederman@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism; subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: At 77, City Oyster’s lead shucker remains master of the shell game
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