[Music plays] Oyster.

How do you say it?

Eyester.

Oystah...hahaha.

[Music plays] I'm Vivian and I'm a chef.

My husband Ben and I were working for some of the best chefs in New York City when my parents offered to help us open our own restaurant.

Of course, there was a catch.

We had to open this restaurant in Eastern North Carolina, where I grew up and said I would never return.

The Avett Brothers perform "Will You Return" The Avett Brothers perform "Will You Return" So this is my life.

Raising twins, living in the house I grew up in, and exploring the south, one ingredient at a time.

Previously on A Chef's Life Today is a very big day for me, personally.

We are hosting the Southern Foodways Alliance here at Chef and The Farmer.

John T. Edge writes for the New York Times.

He's coming today.

We have been trying to get people like you all to come eat here and you're all here in one day.

[Laughter] [Music plays] I forgot.

Y'all made me forget what I'm doing.

I'm gonna stand here like a fool.

The SFA, Southern Foodways Alliance luncheon was a tremendous success.

It's probably a little dramatic to say that my career blossomed out of a tomato sandwich but you could almost say that.

Garden and Gun Magazine called and asked us if they could come and shoot our tomato sandwich because John T. Edge said it was one of his top 20 meals of 2012.

How about if I make a cross section here?

That way you can see kind of the mayonnaise dribbling down.

Or no?

Yeah.

Ummm in fact, sort of the theme is uhhh messy.

-Oh okay so... -Messy is good.

What's more is that he tweeted that Kinston, North Carolina should be named one of the top 20 food cities in America because our restaurant is here.

[Shutters going off] Okay.

This is so unfair... haha.

I've recently been getting oysters from Bill Rice who owns a company called Fish Town.

He distributes under utilized fish and shellfish out of his business in Beaufort, North Carolina.

I always grew up hearing you do not eat oysters in a month that does not contain the letter R. So that's May, June, July, and August.

But things are different now.

A lot of people grow oysters on farms or oyster farms out in the sea.

And they're a lot of wonderful oysters available year round.

So, where are these from?

These are from Cedar Island in Carteret County.

What would you call these?

Cedar Island Selects.

Cedar Island Selects.

Yep.

And select being they're single, deep cut.

These are also a triploid which is uhh... it's got an extra chromosome.

These oysters do not spawn so they don't lose their quality during characteristics during the warm months spawning like the wild diploid oysters do.

And that's the whole month with an R and month without an R. Pretty much.

Wonderful, I don't know if you heard, thrugh the great vine or social media, but Ben and I are opening an oyster bar We are going to serve raw, steamed, and fried oysters and hamburgers.

Hamburgers, great!

[Laughs] [Music plays] I just ate a Cedar Island Select and my first impression is that it was very salty, very briny.

Tasted really just like the ocean and it was a perfect size for me.

You know, sometimes you see these giant whopping oysters with a big swollen belly and that kind of grosses me out honestly.

For me, what I just had is exactly what I'm looking for in an oyster from these parts.

While we were closed following the fire we were approached about opening another restaurant in town and the last thing we want to do is compete with our own restaurant.

And an oyster bar seemed like the perfect thing.

It's going to be in an alley way which I love for an entrance.

At Chef and The Farmer we depend on people to travel because most of Kinston's population does not eat with us regularly.

We may be a special occasion place for them but they're not coming to us once or twice a week.

This community has a lot of economic troubles so hopefully this will work.

We can't really afford to be wrong.

[Music plays] The idea of this is very exciting to me because it's so specific and controlled.

We're just doing oysters and burgers and fries essentially.

I hope that it is a lot easier than what we do on a daily basis at Chef and The Farmer.

This idea came about when we were down after the fire and it seemed like a great idea at the time.

Honestly, if we were approached with this opportunity after the restaurant reopened we probably would not have done it because since the restaurant has reopened it has been extremely stressful.

We're still gonna do this because we committed ourselves to doing it but it will be a strain.

Today we are on Cedar Island and we're going to go and harvest some oysters with Jay Styron.

They are grown in trays, farm raised.

Totally new thing to me so this should be really interesting.

[Music plays] So how did y'all get into doing this?

I really needed to do something in the water.

I've always been interested in fish and technology and biology and growing things and just started researching it.

I knew we raised good wild oysters here.

I said, well shoot, if we can grow em wild why can't we do it in cages.

They do it in Virginia.

Why can't we do it here?

Why is this area good for oysters?

Water quality.

I'm intrigued by this word, seed.

Yes.

Woman- Oyster spat.

They're known as spat.

That's the word for a juvenile oyster.

Only about an inch.

We get them at about 2 to 4 millimeters in diameter.

We put them in these black, plastic floating cages.

And then as the water flows through they get jostled around and these seed, when they're really small, they grow really fast.

They'll double to triple in size about every 3 weeks.

Within about 11 months we're starting to get actual market size oysters out of that batch.

So it takes almost a year.

Wow.

Yes.

Which is short.

But if this were just happening wild how long would it take?

Generally speaking, if a wild oyster sets down in the bottom of a piece of shell or something, it takes those about 3 years to get to market size.

[Music plays] Alright, let's go get some oysters.

So okay, this is gonna sound really stupid.

The shell grows?

Umm hmm.

It absorbs calcium from the water just like your bones collect it from your blood and then it turns it into shell.

Ya'll are moving fast.

I don't know what you are looking for?

Basically we're looking for an oyster that is 3 inches or larger.

So I'm throwing 3 inch straight into here or bigger.

Doubles into another basket and oysters that aren't ready to sell go into a third basket.

The ones that aren't quite ready yet, we put em out and check em again in 3 or 4 months.

It's just amazing how much labor goes into it.

I mean, I thought this was kind of like a plant and harvest.

Right.

We'll touch these probably a half a dozen times from when we first get it and when it goes to market.

How ours are a little bit different than the wild ones out on the natural beds, since our oysters are in these floating cages they are always side by side, on top of each other but are able to move around so we have waves the come through, storms, stuff like that.

They always knock em together.

They're knocking that sediment back so after a while the oyster realizes I can't grow out this way as much as I would like so instead of that it starts growing down and it makes a big belly out on the bottom.

So volume wise you're getting more meat but it may not be from a longer oyster.

It will be a nice plumper, shorter oyster.

I'm not the best oyster opener.

I think you did great.

-Thank you.

-There you go.

Were they salty?

Salty but not as salty as the ones from Tuesday.

Right.

And again we've had rain this week.

You know, it shows it's pretty instantaneous how the flavor changes can come through because of some environmental factor.

Thank you very much.

You're very welcome.

If you just wanna toss the shells back over, the wild oysters, when they spawn, the little oysters will come and settle on the shells and it's all part of the oyster shell recycling program.

[Music plays] Will you open like 30 oysters for me?

Thank you.

This is what we'll have for the meeting.

Basically it's a little bit of this stewed tomato on the bottom, then a really thin slice of smoked mozzarella.

After this is melted slightly, this is dehydrated corn bread crumbs with preserved lemon and bacon fat.

I'm gonna leave and go pick them up.

-Okay.

-Okay.

If they want they can eat dinner here if they're well.

Okay...well.

The babies apparently have some kind of rash on them haha.

Ummm it was there last night but I didn't think it was a big deal.

I don't think anything's a big deal evidently.

Ben and I are kind of the opposite in that spectrum.

He also wanted to take Theta the emergency room when he was a month old because he had a soft spot on his head.

[Laughter] You wanna present this?

I wanna see my kids.

Okay.

Flo, how was the doctor?

Alright, bye little guy.

I love you.

[Music plays] Okay is everybody up here?

Tonight we have two new oyster dishes.

You're gonna verbal the raw oysters and the baked oysters are actually on the menu.

These are from Cedar Island.

They are, in my opinion, a true flavor profile of the ocean, our ocean in particular.

-Salty?

-Yes, really salty.

I think they have a nice sweet finish.

Throw em back.

What's your impression of the oyster?

It's got some body to it.

It's not just a slippery slimy mess going down.

Yeah it's a little creamy, I think.

-I think it's a good oyster.

-Yeah I love oysters.

I think that's one of the best oysters, just raw, you know?

You know we're opening a restaurant across the street called the Boiler Room and so over the next several months we're going to start playing around with a lot more oyster dishes and sauces and things like that so this is just the beginning of our journey.

[Music plays] Since Ben and I decided to stay here and make eastern North Carolina our home we made the decision to build the house that we actually wanted.

We are standing on the site for our new house after living in my parents' house for a little over a year.

We decided that we just wanted to be closer to them.

Both because we enjoy them also because we need their help.

Desperately.

My parents live there.

We live in the brick house.

My sister lives back on the hill.

Everyone jokes that this is Howardville and we're just adding another house here in our little community.

-I really like the view.

-I do too.

I really think this might be the nicest room in the house.

I don't know?

This last week was great.

This is the fourth week we've been open since the fire reopening and finally, you know, made some progress.

But let's be honest.

On Saturday you had a near breakdown.

What do you mean?

In the morning?

Yeah.

It seemed, you know?

It's been a long couple of weeks.

It's been a long couple of weeks and it's been especially long for Ben because he has closed 20 out of the 30 nights that we have been open.

And just before the fire Ben was at a place where he thought he was going to be able to start doing some of the things that he wants to do, like paint, spend time with his kids and the fire just kind of said no to that.

It burned it up.

For at least six months so I hope that...

This week was a good week.

We were busy.

It was excruciatingly hard.

I'm so excited for this.

I know it's crazy.

You never thought growing up in Chicago that you would be living in the center of Howardville, North Carolina?

No.

But it works both ways.

Howardville never thought that I would be living here either.

[Laughter] No.

And all I ever wanted to do was get out of here so.

There you go.

Let's go downstairs.

[Music plays] There's so many ways to eat oysters but really my favorite way is just raw on the half shell but I am very particular about the way they're shucked and then presented.

You're going to need one of these little oyster knives.

It's not sharp but you can hurt yourself and I have stabbed my hand many times doing this.

Get your knife inside the hinge and then fold your dish towel over.

You really have to push to get in there and see I found that spot and it just opened every so lightly.

And it's at this point that you can really ruin things.

You're gonna take your knife and slide over the top of the shell separating the oyster from the top of the shell.

It has like a little foot or a hinge.

There you go.

Okay, so now you have something that looks like it's ready to go out to a guest.

However it is not and I have been places and had oysters where you go do the whole throwing it back and it stuck.

So thesis really what you want to avoid.

So you're going to take it, it has a little foot on the bottom that you want to remove and then turn your oyster over with your knife.

Now that the oyster is turned over and spread out perfectly in it's shell, you can see that there is plenty of liquor left in the shell and the oyster's not torn.

It looks the way that it should.

This oyster liquor is very important because it's half at least of the flavor of the oyster.

It's what gives you that sense of place.

It tells you where the oyster came from and what the waters taste like.

Here at the restaurant we serve our oysters on crushed ice.

I love that because it chills the oyster from the bottom up.

In the French tradition you would normally eat oysters on the half shell with a mignonette sauce which is a basic sauce made with red wine, shallots, and white pepper.

I'm going to make a version of that with some of our local southern ingredients here.

This old timey canning pear, some juice drained off muscadine grapes, and some lemon juice and grated red onion.

I'm gonna peel this pear because the skin is very tough.

I'm just gonna do what we call in the professional kitchen a Benoit which is a really tiny dice.

Basically these are our native grapes in eastern North Carolina.

They are Muscadines and they're very sweet.

They have a very tough skin and I have pushed the flesh out of these skins.

They release some really beautiful, fragrant juice.

I'm just gonna pour a little of that juice over these pears.

Next I'm gonna add just a little squeeze of lemon juice to brighten both the pears and the grape juice.

And finally we're gonna grate a little red onion in here.

You know, as I mentioned a traditional mignonette is a sauce made with red wine, shallots, and white peppers.

So I have none of those ingredients here, obviously.

But the grape juice kind of represents the wine and the grading of the red onion would echo the shallot.

So we're not totally in left field here.

And of course I'm going to add a little touch of salt and a little touch of black pepper.

Hopefully this sauce provides some acidity but doesn't over whelm my oyster.

We'll see.

The sauce is perfect.

It's a little bit of crunchiness from the pear, the acidity from the lemon, and the sweetness from the grapes.

It's a perfect bite.

[Music plays] Did you taste this?

Did you notice that it tasted incredibly different than it did last week?

No because I'm sure you didn't taste it.

Okay I gotta do these oysters.

Alan, what you do?

Put all the hard ones in here?

Growing up I never saw anyone eat raw oysters.

In eastern North Carolina steamed oysters are the thing.

So I'm blown away by the number of raw oysters we actually sell at the restaurant.

Makes me feel much better about the concept of our oyster bar.

-Whitney and Sam, ya'll wanna come help me?

-Sure.

This is a burlap sack so we need to wet it.

So we're gonna put the oysters on that really hot metal and this wet burlap will go on top of it.

Is this gonna explode like it does in the microwave?

It's not gonna explode hopefully but the water from these is gonna make the oysters steam open.

Get down in here!

Two hands.

This evening my family and I are going to do our very first oyster roast.

A lot of people in the south do this.

It's really big in South Carolina in the low country but we've never personally done it.

We've got oysters.

We've got a fire and we've got a piece of sheet metal and we have a piece of wet burlap and people tell me you don't need much more than that.

Once he gets them in a single layer -ya'll can spread that burlap on top.

-Okay.

An oyster roast, it turns out, is a term that's thrown around in the south for any event where you eat a lot of oysters on saltines with cocktail sauce and beer.

As it turns out there are several different ways to do it.

You can steam them with a burlap sack and the fire under neath.

You can put them straight on a grate over a fire and kinda roast them and hope to get smoke flavor into them.

And a lot of people in our area put them in a pig cooker and cook them that way.

Alright, ten minutes.

Hahaha.

This will be my first oyster roast.

You would never know it from my palette but my family for the most part are very picky eaters.

So the idea that we're gonna do this whole oyster roast is just like really not up their alley.

It doesn't matter mom.

It really doesn't.

She wants to know if we should rinse the bucket out.

It really doesn't matter.

Okay.

This is rustic.

[Music plays] Let's take a look at the oysters.

[Music plays] [Laughter] Oysters go really well with lemons.

You can squeeze some lemon on it.

Mark, come have one.

What do you think, Sam?

They're good.

I think I like them better done.

You like them more well done?

Yes I do.

I think it's kind of a fun thing to do.

I think that we should do it for our Christmas party for our staff at our new house.

After doing this for the first time tonight I can understand why it's such a big southern tradition.

Why people have done it for ages.

It was actually pretty easy and everybody has a role to play.

Really interactive.

The sound is awesome coming off the oysters.

It seems like just a nice thing to do with family and friends and if it worked for us it can work for probably anyone.

I can assure you.

I can't believe ya'll have eaten these like this.

Wooooah.

Are you shocked about me?

I am.

I'm shocked about several of ya'll.

Were you shocked about me?

No, you will eat just about anything.

[Laughter] [Music plays] For more information on A Chef's Life visit PBS.org/food.

A Chef's Life is available on DVD.

To order visit PBS.org or call us at 1-800-Play-PBS.