Bluepoint: The Journey

Water laps against the shoreline of Chesapeake Bay. A foghorn lets out a long, low note as one of the trawling boats makes its way back in from the morning run. Crate after crate of live Bluepoint oysters is offloaded from the on-ship ice bins into the holding area at the processor. This morning, those same oysters were out deep in the mud of the bay. In less than twenty-four hours, they’ll have completed the thousand-mile journey to Peoria to be served that evening.

The logistics of modern supply chains is nothing short of amazing. Air travel allows even a small, family-owned Midwestern restaurant the opportunity to source some of the finest and freshest ingredients in the world. Bluepoint oysters are our workhorse. We go through hundreds if not thousands in a week, month in and month out, and very rarely do we have anyone complain about their size or flavor. Though our menu changes pretty frequently, you can be certain that we’ll have Bluepoints: fried, Rockefeller’d, or raw on the half-shell.

Say you come in on a Friday night and sit down at the bar top in the Oyster Bar. You order a dozen Bluepoints on the half-shell. Your bartender starts shucking right in front of you and five minutes later you’re enjoying something that was in Massachusetts yesterday! But the story doesn’t finish there. Look closely the next time you come by. Our staff doesn’t take the shells and throw them away - God forbid! Those shells are painstakingly cleaned, bleached, and put back into service as landscaping.

It seems incredible - but instead of mulch or rock or stone, the landscaping around Jonah’s was made by 40 years of customers enjoying oysters. It’s a fitting metaphor for how important our customers are. Without the love and support of the tri-county area, we would have never become what we are. Thank you.

To close, one of my mother’s favorite quotes from Johnathan Swift: “Twas a brave man that first ate an oyster.”