Fredrik Linifors wins England's oyster shucking championship — SkimNews
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- Fredrik Linifors from Notting Hill Fish Shop won the Speed Shucking Oyster Open at Bentley's in Mayfair and will represent England at the World Oyster Opening Championship in Galway next weekend.
- Stanley Tucci served as a judge at the finals, drinking white wine from a large goblet, eating oysters with a fork, and joking 'I thought this was going to be a wine tasting.'
- Richard Corrigan, the Irish chef who bought Bentley's in 2005, hosted the event; his century-old restaurant serves 10,000 oysters a week and 200 spectators crammed into a tent on the terrace to watch.
- 16 competitors from restaurants around England opened 12 giant native oysters in the first round, with the fastest and most precise advancing to a final of 30 oysters judged on speed, broken shells, damaged meat and grit.
- Corrigan described the work as genuinely dangerous, recalling a hospital bandage on his hand after a knife slipped during Bentley's opening week 22 years ago.
- Corrigan now sources oysters only from Loch Ryan in Scotland, Ireland's west coast and Jersey, having moved away from the Mersea/Colchester area and England's south coast because water-company sewage discharges can pollute nearby beds.
Why it matters: The competition's host has effectively stopped buying oysters from England's south coast and Colchester estuaries because water-company sewage discharges threaten the beds — turning a champagne-soaked Mayfair shucking contest into an inadvertent showcase for the unresolved marine-pollution problem affecting the native oyster, a species English people have eaten for over 2,000 years.
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