Oyster education
Tip of the hat to the folks at the Seaview Crab Company (the first blue fish place you pass on Carolina Beach Road as you’re heading south out of Wilmington toward Pleasure Island) for an education on the characteristics of various local oysters.
The Topsail Singles they offered were the most briny by far, the Pamlicos the largest and plumpest and the Stump Sound Wilds were a happy medium. If you’re looking for more uniformity than you get in a bulky, multiple-oyster cluster, choose Stump Sound singles for the same taste in a consistent size.
If you’re gonna shuck ’em yourself, please remember that you can’t toss out your shells anymore: they were banned from landfills in 2009 in order to promote their use in oyster-bed restoration. (Those uniform cultivated oysters from Stump Sound are partly the result of this effort.)
So take those shells to Squids’, which for years has offered a recycling service for them, or to the new shell recycling area at the Orange County landfill. In early December, representatives of the State Division of Marine Fisheries made their first pick-up of shells from the landfill, carting off 600 bushels that will go right back to the state’s first-class oyster beds.
But while we can all take pride in this, it’s not the season to rest on one’s laurels. The harvest keeps coming in and there’s work to be done.
Be sure to do your part and, please, be careful with the knife and use a glove.
Winging it
’Tis the season of major sporting events, with the biggest snacking day of the year coming up Sunday. In honor of the spirit of the season, The Eater put out a request to readers to suggest the top spots for wings in our little community. It’s not a subject taken lightly.
There was quite a bit of debate over breading versus non-breading and who’s keeping closest to the traditional recipes.
For old-time aficionados, the wings at the long-departed Tijuana Fats are the gold standard. Fats’ wings were pretty much the straight butter-tossed and sauced variety. And for the second year in a row, there is general agreement that the best spot for that particular variety is Armadillo Grill. Southern Rail, right across the street, also scored high in the traditional category. Must be something about that intersection.
For more exotic variations, there were favorites all around.
Bada Wings, which has a sauce for every occasion, came in highly rated, especially for its boneless variety. You can even get them wrapped in a tortilla. (Bada also sells its wings by the pound rather than the count, which makes a bunch of sense.)
Tyler’s got some props too for their wonderful take on the Thai chili variation. They also serve a more standard version with escalating heat measured, of course, in the number of beers required to douse the flames.
For judging the hotter wings, we relied on the asbestos-lined palate of this newspaper’s managing editor, who has a fondness for Milltown’s recipe. He writes: “The wings at Milltown with sriracha sauce are an interesting departure from the traditional variety, and plenty tasty. A pleasant little sting, nice texture and relatively meaty (for a wing, that is). Add a couple Belgian buddies – Chimay Tripel and a cone of frites – and you’ve got yourself a meal there.â€