Meet the man who has shucked a million oysters

Shucking an oyster is tricky business. You have to wiggle the point of your knife into the hinge of the bivalve at an angle, because trying to do it straight on introduces the possibility of slipping and impaling your wrist. Then you have to turn the edge of the knife 90 degrees to gently pop the shell open, taking care not to use too much force, which risks breaking the shell and introducing grit into the oyster meat. Next, you slide the knife down the length of the shell in the same motion as peeling a potato, separating the oyster’s flesh from the top while taking care not to mar it or let the precious liquid from the inside of the cup leak out. Finally, you remove the top of the shell and sweep the knife under the oyster to loosen it from the bottom shell — known as the cup — so that whoever’s eating it can gulp it in one swift motion.

But when you watch Gary McCready, you could be fooled into thinking that it’s about as difficult as spreading room temperature butter on bread.

At a raw bar McCready recently set up in a friend’s apartment for a casual tasting, he worked fastidiously, shucking a dozen oysters in under two minutes, checking to make sure they were free of grit, and nestling them into a bed of ice surrounded by lemons. We each scooped up an oyster — Shipwreck Selects from Prince Edward Island — and McCready’s face transformed with scholarly pleasure as we knocked them back. “It’s like being hit by an ocean wave,” he proclaimed after chewing thoughtfully. “These are beautiful salt bombs.”

An expert shucker at the Oyster House and co-owner of G. Shucks raw bar catering service, McCready is an oyster enthusiast of the highest order. He estimates that he’s shucked as many as a million oysters in his life. “I mean, who wants to do that?” He laughed. “Well, me. It’s me.”

The 37-year-old Media native has been an ebullient presence at the Oyster House for the past seven years, taking customers through the rotating menu of oyster types, like plump, mild, and creamy Sweet Amalias, the more mineral forward, beautifully striped Laughing Gulls, or the balanced, grassy Violet Skys. “It’s great to break down the nuances and the flavors,” he said. “It’s not just salty — is it table salt or sea salt or Epsom salt? Is it sweet or earthy or grassy?”

Regulars love McCready’s willingness to jump in and compare whatever variety is on the menu with their memory of a great oyster, or explain how different levels of rainfall affect the flavor (more rain, less brine). He’s such a customer favorite that at this year’s Shuckfest, the Oyster House’s annual shucking competition and oyster celebration at Liberty Point, one devotee showed up with a batch of fans featuring a photo of his face. (McCready came in fourth in the competition, where I was a judge.)

To McCready, shucking isn’t just another kitchen task, it’s an art form. “You can have the most beautiful oyster in the world, and it won’t matter if you can’t shuck it,” he said. “You’ve got to know your shucker.”

A bad shucking job can ruin an oyster. The composition of the bivalve is delicate, McCready explains. When you eat an oyster, you rarely consider the different parts of the creature — it looks like a gray blob. But the individual organs make up the oyster’s subtle balance of protein, fat, and minerals: Fat is stored in the stomach, a section located toward the hinge of the shell. If you impale or mangle the belly while shucking, it not only diminishes the fat content, it renders the oyster bitter. If you cut the adductor muscle, the translucent circles that keep the shell closed, you’re losing the sweetness. And if you accidentally shred the gills, which look like a dark line in the flesh, you’ll lose the subtle vegetal notes that can make an oyster taste like seaweed, moss, cucumber, or mushroom. The liquor — the liquid inside the cup — is where the saltiness comes from. Let it leak out, and your oyster will taste completely different.

Not only does McCready open hundreds of oysters a week at Oyster House, for the past year he’s also been working toward a certification as an Oyster Sommelier and Master Shucker from the Oyster Master Guild. The guild is a program recently founded by Patrick McMurray, Toronto restaurateur and the Guinness World Record holder for most oysters opened in a minute (33), and oyster expert and educator Julie Qiu. They met at the world oyster shucking championship in Ireland in 2014, and had been circling around the idea of a more formal oyster education program and online community for close to a decade before launching the Oyster Master Guild — known as OMG — in September 2023.

The program’s structure is loosely based on the Wine and Spirit Education Trust’s certification course, or WSET, which offers professional certification in wine for restaurant professionals and enthusiasts alike. Thus the use of the term “oyster sommelier,” which Qiu said is just an easier shorthand than coming up with a different term for a mastery of oysters and then explaining it to the public. “Obviously I would prefer to have a food rather than a drink structure to model the course on,” she explained. “But I think when it comes to capturing expressive terminology and a sense of place, wine has done just an incredible job with creating that framework. Why reinvent the wheel?”

Currently, McCready is in classes for the highest level offered by OMG, Level 3, which requires him to complete a skills portion — shucking thousands of oysters — and an education portion, which requires touring oyster farms, hosting or taking tasting classes, and otherwise honing his expertise in the business of bivalves. “Gary exemplifies the best of the best,” Qiu said. “He’s marvelous at what he does, and it makes a huge difference in the oyster experience.”

Much of what McCready does is gentle oyster education. “I always say there’s no wrong way to eat an oyster,” he said. But if you ask, he’ll admit that he’s not a fan of cocktail sauce, which “is often used to cover up faults in oysters.” He also recommends spritzing oysters with lemon one at a time rather than all at once, to avoid obscuring the oyster’s delicate flavor. “It’s not a race,” McCready said. “Each oyster should be a minute to a minute-and-a half tasting process. You want to enjoy them.”