While working our way through a steaming pile of freshly roasted May River oysters on a crisp afternoon this past weekend, a friend originally from Mobile, Alabama, commented that she’d never eaten a roasted oyster until she moved to Savannah.

That isn’t surprising: while oyster roasts are so commonplace here that they’re practically synonymous with the Lowcountry, they’re actually rare on the Gulf.

There’s probably an interesting anthropological reason why this ancient way of cooking oysters, once found throughout the Southeastern coast in pre-Colombian days, is today found only in Carolina and Georgia. But surely a big part of it is the raw material—the intensely briny cluster oysters that blanket the edges of our tidal creeks and rivers.

There’s just something about these oysters that takes to roasting the way chickens take to frying. Though they can be slurped ice-cold and raw right off the shell, fried up crisp and golden brown, broiled under a bacon blanket on the half-shell, or stewed in butter and cream—pretty much like any other oyster—it is only in roasting that they fully realize the promise instilled in them at their creation.

When roasted until crisply firm but still bursting with juice, their sweet-salty flavor comes into its own, especially if the roasting was done the old fashioned way over a hardwood-fired pit so that they pick up a subtle suggestion of wood smoke.

While the notion of “terroir” is fully embraced in wine- and cheese-making, we rarely give enough thought to the role it plays in the development of regional cookery. But we should: the character of the raw material in a given place has a great deal to do with the way its cookery evolves over time.

My friend grew up on Gulf oysters that had mostly come from Apalachicola Bay. Before pollution made eating them raw an exercise in hepatitis roulette, snapping crisp, mildly salty Apalachicola’s were perfection ice-cold right out of their shells. But while they can be (and around here, often are) roasted, it doesn’t bring out the best in them.

We could extrapolate endlessly on this, pondering celebrated regional dishes from pesto alla genovese to North Carolina barbecue, but that would get pretty tedious and satisfy no one but a handful of curious culinary historians. The point is, pesto would probably not have developed the way it did without the unique flavors of the small-leaved, sea-air bathed Genoese basil and delicately fruity olive oil, nor would Carolina barbecue be what it is without a surplus of hickory forests and Carolina-raised hogs.

Keeping to those oysters, there’s a lot of fuss about the original and authentic Oysters Rockefeller—whether it should contain spinach or a particular herb, whether it must have absinthe or can be made with Pernod—but almost nothing is ever said about the unique flavor of the Louisiana Gulf oysters on which the whole dish is built.

Even if you had the original recipe straight from the hands of its creator, it would not taste the same without those oysters. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make Oysters Rockefeller or, for that matter, pesto or Carolina-style barbecue, or never roast any oyster other than one from our own tidal waters. But we would do well to notice and celebrate the subtle differences that our own local produce brings to our cooking.

Panned Oysters

A full-blown oyster roast is a lot of work. When the yen for local oysters strikes, here is another deceptively homey and simple local dish that makes these briny-sweet beauties shine. In his Time-Life series book, American Cooking: Southern Style, Eugene Walter told of being shown how to make this dish by the wife of celebrated Savannah writer Conrad Aiken. Mrs. Aiken stirred the oysters with her bare finger. When the liquor got too hot for her to keep her finger in it, she said, the oysters were perfectly done.

Serves 4

1 pint shucked oysters, preferably May River

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Hot sauce

Worcestershire sauce

Whole black pepper in a peppermill

Salt

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

4 pieces firm, thick slices of home-style bread, toasted

1 lemon cut in wedges

8 healthy sprigs watercress

1. Drain the oysters in a strainer set over a bowl for at least 15 minutes. Cover and save the strained liquor for fish stock.

2. Melt the butter in a shallow, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the oysters and cook, stirring constantly, until their gills begin to curl, about 2 minutes. Season generously with a few dashes each of hot sauce and Worcestershire and a liberal grinding of black pepper.

3. Remove the pan from the heat, taste and adjust the seasonings, adding salt if needed (if they are local ones, they won’t need it). Put the toasted bread on warmed plates, spoon the oysters and pan juices evenly over them, garnish with lemon and watercress, and serve immediately.