Simon Haslam
While you can eat oysters all year round, they are particularly flavoursome in the cooler months, which is why August is a great time for the Balcony Oyster ‘festival’. During this special period, a favourite since it was first introduced in 2015, an ‘oyster happy hour’ takes place every day from 5pm to 6pm during August. Normally, the happy hour for oysters at the Balcony is just on Wednesday, when the oysters are half price, so this is a significant extension and you can bet that lots of oysters will be consumed!
Luckily, NSW produces a lot of oysters each year, about 70 million in fact, so we’re unlikely to run out. Most of the oysters (about 80% of NSW oysters, and 40% of Australia’s oysters) are Sydney rock oysters, a native species, so any Sydney rock oysters on your plate at the Balcony are most likely three to four years old (as they grow more slowly than Pacific oysters).
In fact, it’s something of a miracle of numbers that oysters reproduce at all, with a survival rate of just 0.1% during spawning. Luckily, each ‘male’ oyster produces about 100 million sperm, and each ‘female’ oyster around 20 million eggs. Why the ‘woke’ inverted commas? Because the thoroughly modern oyster, as well as having a heart, changes sex during its lifetime – according to some scientists many times a year.
Water purity is important for oysters, and around 1900 the oyster saloons of Lismore, Mullumbimby, Brunswick Heads and Byron were famous for serving oysters from the Brunswick River, said to be the best in the country. Nowadays, why not enjoy them on the balcony of The Balcony?
The flavourings for your oyster meal are likely to be significantly more sophisticated than they were 115 years ago, when oysters were unlikely to be paired with ‘aguachile jalapeno, lime, coriander and cucumber’, ‘ponzu, picked ginger and salmon roe’, or ‘oyster mushrooms, iceberg and black garlic aioli’, just to name a couple of the modern-day dishes available this month during the oyster festival at the Balcony, located on the corner of Jonson and Lawson streets in Byron Bay.
Bookings and info: balcony.com.au or phone 02 6680 9666
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