Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

Sunday, August 16th we’ll be barbecuing oysters and steaming clams at the McReavy House Museum Art Free-for-All, in Union, Washington. There will be arts and crafts demonstrations throughout the day, so stop on by to learn about basket weaving, goat cheese making, screen printing, and flame working.

View of the Olympic Mountains, in the winter, from Union.

Come down to the oyster farm between 10:30 to 1 this Saturday to pick your own oysters and eat oyster barbecue!

Saturday was cloudy and rainy… a good day for vampires but not for the rest of us. And only a few hardy souls braved the drizzle to attend the first ever Open Farm Day. Being optimists, we consider it a smashing success. And it was really fun, with the rain and mist giving the day a genuine Northwest feeling.

Allison and David searching for the perfect dozen.

Kate and Rick picked mussels and oysters for a big family dinner.

The NEXT open farm day is Saturday, April 25th from 10:30 am to 1 pm. This time we’re going to set up a barbecue on the beach and cook up a few oysters.

Let us know if you can make it! Email orders@hamahamastore.com or call 888-877-5844.

Last Friday the Hama Hama mobile shucking crew made a guest appearance at the French-American Chamber of Commerce’s 15th annual Seattle Beaujolias Nouveau festival, held at the Lake Union Armory.

We shucked 80 dozen oysters in a little under 3 hours, occasionally breaking free from the oyster booth to wander around and graze on all the other delicious food, including chocolate from the new Seattle chocolate store, Chocopolis, and bread from Boulangerie Nantaise.

The sign.

The scene.

Sibling concentration.

Interesting article about this year’s beaujolais crop, here.

This past weekend we drove down to Portland to serve oysters at the Northwest Food and Wine festival. The event was packed with happy people and delicious food.

Our booth was conveniently located next to Willamette Valley Vineyards, whose Pinot Gris has won Oyster Wine Awards two years running. We also saw our friends from Mt. Townsend Creamery, discovered Heirloom Orchards, ate LaLoo’s goat milk ice cream, and enjoyed a spicy Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blend from Adamant cellars, in Walla Walla.

The shucking crew, busy concentrating on not shucking their wrists, and having difficulty staying ahead of the horde.

Last week we traveled to Monterey, California to serve oysters at the Monterey Food and Wine Festival. It was a smashing success. So successful, in fact, that we didn’t really have time to take photos because we were too busy shucking oysters… it was an “all hands on deck” situation.

The event was held in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We recommend that everyone make a pilgrimage to the Aquarium sometime soon. We particularly liked the Outer Bay exhibit– and feel like our lives are richer now that we’ve discovered sunfish. As for the wines at the festival, we fell in love with the Alexander Valley cabernet from Silver Oak Cellars. Absolutely delicious, and way beyond our price range.

We’d gotten up at 4 am Thursday to pack up the oysters and catch the plane, and it was a frigid morning, so we arrived in California wearing wool sweaters and stocking caps, and without sunglasses. Needless to say, the warmth and sunshine were welcome changes from the 40 degree rainstorm we’d left behind. We took advantage by turning the trip into a “workation,” and went surfing in Santa Cruz and sightseeing along the coast before flying back to the top left.

If you find yourself near Monterey, California tomorrow evening stop by the Aquarium for the 32nd annual Monterey Food and Wine Festival. We’ll be there serving freshly shucked extra small Hama Hama oysters. We’re pulling them out of the salt water tomorrow morning and flying them down specifically for the event… they’ll be ridiculously fresh and good.

Every year the nearby town of Hoodsport outdoes itself putting on a Fourth of July extravaganza. This year we got ourselves together and participated in the street fair on Friday, selling barbecued Hama Hama oysters with a butter and garlic sauce. Saturday was the really busy day in Hoodsport–with live music, a raffle, and a surprisingly excellent fireworks display–but since it’s also a really busy day in our store we weren’t able to fire up the barbecues.

Several of our customers on Friday were hungry hikers in town to visit the newly re-opened Staircase trailhead.

Wednesday, June 4th was the lowest tide of the year. The tide dropped to -4.3 around noon, and then rose to a 12.3 high tide in the evening. A group of people from the Seattle Oceanaire restaurant came out to celebrate the low tide and learn a little bit about Hama Hama oysters.

Adam gave them a walking tour of the beach, going over everything from oyster seasonality and reproduction to the challenges of predicting the effect of atmospheric pressure on tidal changes. They gobbled it up, and they also ate an impressive quantity of shellfish. All in the name of research, of course.

Adam also discussed how growing location influences oyster flavor. Here, Jeff Daniels from Marinelli Shellfish reaches for an oyster growing right next to the river, which tend to be sweeter, and less salty, than oysters grown further from the river.

One of the coolest things about an extreme low tide is that you can walk all the way out to the tippy-tip end of the tideflats, to where the ground starts sloping down to the bottom of the Canal. It reminds you of how hard the river has worked to build the massive tideflats.

Unfortunately, the drop-off is really hard to photograph. Above: a picture of people looking at it.

The 10th annual Slurp Festival took place at the Olympia-based Fish Brewing Company on Sunday, May 18th. The event, sponsored by Fish Brewing and the Pacific Coast Shellfish Grower’s Association, was a smashing success. Hama Hama blew through 40 dozen oysters in no time, leaving us with free time to wander around the event and sample all the delicious food and drink.

All proceeds went to benefit the PCSGA’s shellfish habitat rejuvenation fund.

Shucker Andy. Looking Psyched.

Beer + Wine + All You Can Eat Oysters = Big Fun

Not sure what this is… and neither was the guy in the shirt.

We were thrilled to learn that Anthony’s Homeport used Hama Hamas for their delicious barbecued oyster dish.