Daniel Neilson returns to Brittany to meet the farmers of some of the world’s best oysters.
The first oyster of any trip must be savoured au naturel: no lemon, no sauce. I pry it open carefully, flick off just a little of the salty water, and then tip the mollusc into my mouth. I roll it around and gently chew, letting it hit all of my taste buds. Synapses snap and open, triggering memories and evoking the sea. The oyster is fresh like sea air. Eating it is like breathing.
Around me, dozens of fellow diners seem to be momentarily silenced by the taste of the oyster. Eyes close as they suck up the briny mollusc, before developing a broad grin. Cancale’s oyster market a hugger-mugger of visitors. The chatter of many different languages, the crack of oyster shells opening and the friendly banter of the stalls holders. Everyone is here for the same reason as I am: some of the world’s finest oysters.
I can’t remember the first time I had an oyster, but I did realise one day, looking back at holidays with my wife, we’d almost unknowingly chosen places known for their oysters: PEI in Canada, Hokkaido in Japan and, a few years earlier, Cancale in Brittany.
Cancale and the larger town of St Malo are those destinations you find yourself endlessly recommending to people, and reminiscing about. Days along this coast of France are defined by long walks along the prom followed by long lunches of seafood and Muscadet, lazy afternoons on the beach, and then more seafood. A better way to pass a few days I couldn’t imagine.
It’s why, earlier this year, I found myself standing on the quarterdeck of Brittany Ferries MV Bretagne sailing through Portsmouth’s docks, quite literally, into the sunset, to St Malo, on the northern Brittany coast.
I’d booked a tour of the Cancale oyster farms with Inga Smyczynski of Ostreïka. I’m told to head to the market and find a woman in yellow overalls. I find her laughing with a stallholder.
“You’re lucky,” she tells me. “The tide is out, and we can explore the foreshore.”
I swap my trainers for wellies, and we walk down into the mud. The oyster beds are exposed, and we walk through lines of bags filled with oysters, placed on metal tables designed to help the farmers from stooping too much. Tractors trundled around the beds, with workers hiking sacks of oysters onto the trailers.
“Cancale is a paradise for oysters,” Inga tells me. She explains how the geography of the area conspires to make it such an oyster Eden. How the seas are extremely rich in plankton thanks to the sun it gets, and how the tide, with one of the highest differentials in the world (up to 14 metres between high and low tide), conspires with the currents to cleanse the oysters. And why, because no significant river empties into the bay, the rain washes minerals off the rocks into the seas, all benefitting the purity of Cancale oysters.
After the tour, we head into the market and join a stallholder named Pierre at Aux Delices de Cancale. He shucks a dozen oysters with alarming speed, offers a lemon, but tells me not to squirt any.
“Natural is best”. “And don’t forget to chew,” Inga insists. “Roll it around your mouth.” “And eat the muscle,” Pierre adds. “It’s the best bit.”
I slurp it into my mouth and look over the oyster beds where it has just been taken from. There is a freshness and purity in the taste that makes me dizzy. Inga pours a glass of Muscadet (of course), its subtle effervescent tang the perfect foil for a supremely fresh oyster.
‘On the Waves’
The following day, I drove back to Cancale, but this time to Beach Port Mer. I rounded the brow of the hill, the cove opened up, and I saw the boats gently bobbing on the flat water.
My directions were to find captain Jérôme Foyer (white cap), to spend a few hours sailing around the Bay of Mont St Michel and enjoying a ‘pique nique Corsaire’. I saw him on a little boat by the beach. I took off my shoes and socks, paddled to the boat and hopped in, meeting him and his daughter. We sped off into the bay and pulled up alongside a hardy wooden sailboat named Ausquémé.
Life moves slower on the waves. Carefully and deliberately, we hoisted up the foresails and set the Tricolour. To feel the rope through the hands and the jolt of the boat as the wind filled the sails was an exhilarating experience.
After a couple of hours touring the coves, islets and beaches around Cancale, learning the maritime history of the region, we pulled down the sail and Jérôme, a jovial man with a wry sense of humour best described as ‘Breton’, pulled out a hamper and a wooden box with a dozen oysters. He prepared three for each of us, one natural, one with pepper and one with an oil.
The oyster tasted like the gentle sea breeze, and Jérôme glanced over, noticing my eyes closed as I explored the taste. I saw him grinning when my eyes opened. After a while, we slowly headed back, and the sails pulled taut. Cancale’s beaches were not far away.
