Get Shucked: The Summer that Started the Lou Oyster Cült
A natural pearl pendant necklace. That’s what I gifted my wife Charlotte for her 30th birthday last year. A short time later, I wrote an in-depth feature on Louisville’s ascendant pop-up restaurant movement. Between these two seemingly unrelated events, a creative writing 101 workshop couldn’t produce better foreshadowing for where we both found ourselves this summer — her shucking oysters with a few of our friends while I took guests’ orders behind the counter of our very own roving restaurant.
Before we were married, we lived in a modest Butchertown apartment where one of our absolute favorite date nights involved a brief stroll to RYE, bellying up to the bar, and splitting a dozen or more happy hour oysters paired with a couple cocktails. Charlotte worked there for over two years, so we were friendly with a lot of the staff. Beyond the congenial milieu, we both particularly appreciated enjoying bivalve delights in an environment that was bright and approachable, given that, with a few exceptions, oysters in Louisville, KY gravitated toward the dimly-lit, old school, jacket-preferred steakhouse set. Suffice to say, its closing last year really sucked. As These Unprecedented Times taketh away though, the pandemic also forced, at the risk of sounding too clinical about it, innovation. The pop-up restaurant trend within the local bar scene, for example, was very cool to watch blossom. Enterprising chefs could create and serve interesting menus without the headaches of a permanent storefront. And bars, navigating a world without nightlife, could welcome customers back through their doors in a new way. When you hear the platitude of “getting through this together,” the creativity and cooperation between culinary, bartending, and hospitality is a true gold standard. My article in LEO Weekly explored all of this in-depth with perspectives from a constellation of chefs without a fixed address. I won’t rehash it all here, but give it a read some time (plug, plug).
On a mild April evening this year, Charlotte and I wanted to pull up a barstool and shoot some sea treats. But where? Our shellfish HQ was gone. As chance would have it, our friend and former RYE staffer Neil responded to Charlotte’s tweet inquiring where to find fresh oysters that aren’t from a stuffy steak house. Channeling some inspiration from on high, he responded “Why don’t you start an oyster truck?”
Charlotte grew up in New England, clamming, fishing, and shucking with her family on Cape Cod in the summers, enjoying the spoils of her homeland's delectable cold water seafood. I spent a large fraction of my adult life honing my skills as a home chef with a Smithsonian-worthy sauce collection. Like, maybe we should fuck around and launch an oyster stand? But we’re both (extremely) Virgos, so there’s no jumping in with both feet or throwing caution to the wind - we would need to do our homework. Sparing the more granular details, Charlotte and I educated ourselves on shellfish aquaculture, various local regulatory stuff, and how to shuck these damn things without incurring an undesirable trip to urgent care. I’d be remiss not to mention that I worked as a server at a seafood restaurant in my early 20s. This joint, bafflingly, required their front-of-house staff to shuck our own oysters on slower nights. As such, if you sat in my section on a Wednesday night, we were 86 oysters. And we were very sorry about that. The irony of rejecting this free shucking education years later is not lost to me.
(L) Charlotte Boyd at Lou Oyster Cult’s debut pop-up at The MerryWeather ( R ) Charlotte Boyd on the beach in in Dennis, MA on the bayside of Cape Cod as a child
We also have a predilection for puns with the power to either delight or disgust depending on the audience. Going through a running word bank and seafood-adjacent free association one afternoon during some al fresco dining at Taco Choza, Charlotte offhandedly mentioned a certain late 60s/early 70s radio-friendly occult rock powerhouse. From my own tenure in rock and roll, I sadly cannot hear shit. “Wait, did you say Lou Oyster Cult?” “No, but that’s really funny.” Uh oh. That’s it. We have to call it that.
There’s eating for sustenance, and there’s eating for experience. Outside of elaborate tiki drinks or molecular gastronomy, enjoying oysters with others is the apex of experiential dining. It’s refined but primitive. It’s visceral and invigorating. It’s inherently fun, loaded with that je ne sais quoi. And for the person preparing the meal, there’s certainly a primordial, autochthonous thrill of thrusting a shank into a rock, dropping the bounty on ice and sending it out the door. We love it, and we want to share that love as adventurous but unpretentious gourmands. That’s where our mission statement “oysters for everyone” originated. Thanks to our city’s little boutique importer, UPS, we’re fortunate enough to source extremely fresh oysters in a landlocked locale. And because of the nature of the pop-up model, we can offer them at a lower cost. One of the very first ideas we conjured was the Two Buck Shuck - a quality cold water oyster that paid homage to the beloved Trader Joe’s wine varietal, though our Prince Edward Island-sourced Malpeque oysters are an even better deal (with all due respect to Charles Shaw). It encompasses our ethos.
Unfortunately, there’s no magic 8-ball to consult. We believed the idea of a mobile oyster stand was novel and appealing, and maybe something with potential. Of course, people believe all sorts of things — perhaps you’ve noticed this. With no real metric for local demand, we ordered a modest initial shipment and asked a couple of our good buds to help us shuck for tips. We scheduled our debut at The MerryWeather — not only one of our favorite bars in town owned and operated by amazing folks, but also the epicenter and incubator for the new pop-up movement. It was a Monday night and we’d figured there would be at least some forgiving industry types imbibing, so let’s give it the ol’ college try and hope that we don’t have too many oysters left at the end of the night.
(L-R) Trays of oysters freshly shucked by friends of the Cült at various pop-ups
Given our name, of course we have a cowbell, which we dutifully hit in rhythm to announce the beginning of service. We were so preoccupied with setting up that we failed to notice the line literally out the door. One hour and 12 minutes later, we were sold out — to our utter shock. It was enthralling to see so many friends come out and support the Cült, but even more amazing was the number of folks from places we love like Toasty’s Tavern, Monnik, Zanzabar, fellow pop-up purveyors and mentors POCO, and a slew of others around the neighborhood and city who came to eat. It was a hell of a welcome for us to the community, and one we will never forget. We were especially floored by the grace of every guest in line. It was the first night so there were some ticket times that were less than optimal, yet everyone - literally - was patient and so excited to be a part of what we’re doing. Since that first one, we’ve enlisted a few more friendly helping hands to our crew, and added a rotating seafood special meant to either complement a plate of oysters or accommodate those who don’t love a raw bar.
We’re working on some wine pairing events for fall and to expand the menu as we fine tune this machine. Lou Oyster Cült will be toting our industrial coolers around anywhere that will have us. The largest of which, by the way, is named Roy the Big Oy Boy, and he can house up to 1,000 oysters, keeping them cold and fresh for hours (Roy is the employee of the month every month). And at some point there will be merchandise with puns even more despicable than our name. Perhaps the most anticipated aspect of our future is spending time with other pop-ups and food trucks in our commissary kitchen, listening to and learning from the likes of Happy Belly Bistro, Bamba Eggroll Co., and others. To tie up all these spun yarns, our new culinary home is only a stone’s throw from the old apartment from where we used to walk for oysters.
Join the Lou Oyster Cült and get shucked at an upcoming pop-up by following them on Instagram.