Street Food on the Half Shell

In 1660, Dutch settlers clustered at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, house upon house, facing the curve of the harbor where ships jostled one another for space and trade. If you peered over the jetties and piers that reached into the sea, you'd see oysters the size of dessert plates growing like grapes on a vine, just as clustered, crowded and cramped as the humans in their patch of earth above.

A dirt track was the only barrier between the colony and the port, its path made iridescent by the crushed oyster shells, tossed there first by native Americans who feasted on the roasted mollusks before the advent of the Dutch Settlement; a hundred years later, the shells came from diners patronizing the dozens of oyster carts selling a snack or quick lunch to passersby. City lore says folks began to call the street Paerlstraat — Pearl Street — because of its glow. Within fifty years the island was part of Britain, and Pearl Street was no longer the perimeter as the harbor was backfilled to create more land. For the oyster vendors, America's first and most beloved street food, these changes mattered little.

In his book The Big Oyster, Mark Kurlansky described a Manhattan that was oyster-crazed throughout its history, regardless of whether the eater was an 18th century British foot soldier gorging himself on the bivalve bounty, a common man filling his belly from street shacks, or the city's elite who, by the oyster-frenzied late 19th century, slurped down the mollusks while cocooned at chic eateries like Delmonico's. The bivalves remained obscenely abundant in New York's waters well into the beginnings of the 20th century, and street vendors' businesses flourished. The locations of the oyster carts, often northward scouts into new Manhattan territory, signaled the direction of growth of the city.