Joining in the tasty maritime delights harvested from Breton waters
‘SO, what do you think?’ Hermione gave no immediate answer to my question. Her cute little nose wrinkled and twitched as she considered her reply. She blinked several times in rapid succession and she pursed luscious lips. She appeared to swallow, then swallow again. Her eyes watered and her cheeks reddened. Still no answer came. I stretched a comforting hand across the dinner table to take gentle hold of my wife’s fingers, hoping that the caress would be received as helpful, considerate, supportive…
We had arrived in France at the town of Cancale, selected more or less at random as our place to stay, just another dot on the coastline. It was chosen as being not too long a drive from the ferry port but Cancale was a hitherto closed book to us. The name - approximately pronounced Cong-kahl – had never before tripped off our tongues. Its fame had not reached us.
We were not alone in our ignorance. Before leaving, we told friends how we were setting off to spend a few days on the coast of Brittany in a town called Cancale. Never heard of it, was the unanimous response. During our brief stay, we noticed no other Irish voices - and no German or Dutch accents either. The cars we saw were all French.
With its seaside setting and fine houses built in the Breton provincial style, it seemed we had stumbled on a hidden gem – hidden that is from the rest of the world. But Cancale by no means hidden from the French themselves, for Cancale is at the heart of a traditional industry, an industry which makes Cancale a destination of pilgrimage for many faithful citizens of La République.
We found our apartment that Sunday afternoon and decided to take a quiet stroll. We ambled arm in arm, down the hill towards the old port, hoping maybe to sip a quiet glass of something long and cool in some sleepy café overlooking the bay.
No chance. The seafront in Cancale was hopping. Jammers. Thronged. At the centre of all the swirling, happy humanity were half a dozen stalls. Strange, we thought, to find a market in full swing at this hour on a Sunday. But this proved to be no ordinary market. Each stallholder was dealing in one commodity and one commodity only. Oysters. They sold oysters straight from the nearby ocean. They sold little oysters. They sold enormous oysters called ‘pieds de cheval’ (horse’s hooves). They sold single oysters. They sold oysters by the dozen and oysters by the case.
And there was no shortage of buyers for these strangely crinkled and distorted shellfish. Some customers came to stock up but most were intent on devouring their oysters on the spot, sitting on the sea wall and slurping their way through their purchases. A Mister Whippee style van was parked nearby, dispensing not ice-cream but the Muscadet wine which is considered ideal accompaniment to the oysters.
In Ireland, oysters are generally viewed as a once a year extravagance enjoyed by millionaires swigging black velvet but, in Cancale, oysters are available to be enjoyed by everyone, any day of the week. Great mounds of discarded oyster shells accumulated on the strand beneath the sea wall and a tractor wended its way across the sand at low tide fetching more oysters to meet the demand. The bay of Cancale is one big oyster farm.
We two foreigners held back from joining in the outdoor feast but, when night fell and we went in search of supper, the time had come to take the plunge and immerse ourselves in Gallic custom.
The menu at the restaurant offered – surprise, surprise - oysters as starters or oysters as main course. The choice lay between oysters on their own and oysters served with whelks and prawns. So we dutifully ordered our oysters and a kindly waitress prised open the shells to reveal the grey-lined shapeless blobs of flesh within. Hermione elected to go first, sucking up all that timeless custom. ‘So, what do you think?’
My darling spouse gazed at me through the candlelight and eventually found words, just two words, to sum up her considered reaction to this gourmet delight, this time-honoured delicacy, this essence of French taste and sophistication: ‘Salty.’ She paused. ‘Snot!’