Serious Eats
September 5, 2025
Back when I was a wee line cook, besides plating fish for crudo and chopping literal buckets of onions, I had to shuck oysters. The oyster knife the chef handed me on my first day was gorgeous, sporting a burnished, vintage pommel. It was also dull and ineffective. I’d stand on the line, whittling away at the bivalves, bits of shell flaking off and on more than one occasion, poking my palm. And often all I had to show for my toil was a travesty: An oyster with its hinge side broken off, meat leaking out like a hernia (sorry). Maybe it was some sort of hazing ritual, who can say? Thankfully, a fellow line cook took pity on me and brought in his personal oyster knife—a no-frills option with a plastic handle and a sharp blade. I finally started to shuck oysters with confidence, with only the truly knobbly, dinosaur-like ones giving any resistance.
The lesson of this tale: A dull oyster knife makes for a miserable (and potentially dangerous) experience. The good news? I worked out my right forearm testing 12 oyster knives by shucking 150 oysters, so you don’t have to suffer as I once did.