Category: Lifestyle
Title: Country Living
Country Living magazine has explained why a small wooden hut eatery in [delete] on an Essex salt marsh island rarely has a free table between September and April.
Mersea Island's The Company Shed may have a concrete floor, PVC tables and plastic windows, but it is the place to tuck into some of the country's freshest native oysters.
With a subtler flavour than their salty Pacific cousins, natives should be chewed and slowly savoured, oyster farmer Richard Haward told the magazine.
Mr Haward, who sells his catches both at his small restaurant and in London's popular Borough Market, explained that many Brits do not recognise a native as they are used to seeing the more prolific Pacific variety, which can be farmed all year round.
Natives are only available in winter and spring as the months between May and September are breeding season.
They are found in just a few locations outside Mersea Island, with Scotland's Loch Ryan and Cornwall's Fal estuary being two of the areas where they still thrive.
Mersea Island is separated from the mainland by the Pyefleet Channel and the Strood Channel.
Posted by: Arabella Gibson
Do you prefer UK grub or food from abroad?