Some recent media articles:

Cutler & Co reviewed

The oyster man cometh
Roberta Muir

Shuck it and see
by Andrew McConnell

Capturing the gout de la mer
Kirsten Lawson

Media information

Cutler & Co

Andrew McConnell and his new restaurant in Fitzroy, Cutler & Co, gets high praise (and an 18/20 rating) in a review in the Age's Epicure supplement in March... "Here he's found the perfect canvas for his not inconsiderable ambition. It's not a finished product by any means. But even from its inception, Cutler & Co is a triumph — a downright sexy one too."

The review mentions our oysters..."The appetisers list kicks off with freshly shucked oysters from Moonlight Flat, purveyors of fine molluscs."

Apparently it's already necessary to book well ahead, and we wish Andrew every success.

To read the full review click here.

John Lethlean also reviewed Cutler & Co in The Weekend Australian on 25-26 April, and once again our oysters get an honourable mention when Lethlean describes the entrees..."a powerfully minerally Clair de Lune oyster with freshwasabi".

The oyster man cometh
Roberta Muir

This article first appeared in Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine, October 2006

Oyster man to Australia's top restaurants, Steve Feletti, is giving our pearlescent beauties a French polish.

Steve Feletti is a man obsessed, and the object of his obsession is oysters native to Australia. The news that DNA testing has confirmed suspicions that our angasi is almost identical to France's legendary belon has him particularly excited. ‘For local oyster devotees this is like finding native truffles in our backyard,’ he says.

Then there's the more common Sydney rock oyster: ‘In this frightening world of shrinking biodiversity, our native rock oyster is a real food landmark, with a unique sweet flavour, unheard of shelf­-life, and worthy of passionate support at all levels’. Sydney, Feletti believes, is the last great oyster city on the planet. ‘Where else can you find three commercial species (angasi, Sydney rock and Pacific) grown in reputable waters, within a three‑hour courier radius of a city offering world‑class restaurant presentation at sub‑parity world prices?’

Feletti came to oyster farming by way of a sea change, from the Australian Wheat Board, when time in Japan and Europe convinced him that Australia had world‑class oysters which were ‘under­marketed, poorly treated, with dismal delivery to the consumer’.

The scary stuff, says Feletti, was realising that if we didn't revolutionise the oyster food experience and generate genuine household demand and an understanding of the differences between oysters, we'd probably lose this food icon in the longer term to competition. The Pacific oyster, which originates in Japan and was introduced into Australia in the 40s, has the economic advantage of being faster growing than native oysters, taking less than two years to reach maturity, whereas Sydney rocks and angasis take about three. ‘The Pacific now accounts for about 85 per cent of table oyster production worldwide ‑ you can't kill it with a stick,’ he says.

Feletti produces four trademarked oysters: an angasi under the name of Moonlight Flat Oysters, and three Sydney rocks, Clair de Lune Bouton, Moonlight en Surface and Label Rouge. Brands only work if they stand for something, of course, and Feletti explains that each of his oysters is finished in a different way, to create a different product. ‘Whether it's wheat, wine, wagyu or cheese, the key to premiums is the same… it's all about the finish. The French cheese and oyster industries both use the term affinage for this process.’

Oysters, being filter feeders, gain a lot of their character from their environment. Feletti had what he refers to as one of his ‘eureka moments’ while researching France's famous green oysters in Marennes‑Oleron. ‘I realised just how significantly man can influence the oyster's physical structure. It's not that I want to produce green oysters, but the principle offers huge possibilities in other directions. Affinage is my main focus today.’ So much so that Feletti only grows from scratch about 30 per cent of the oysters he sells, the remainder he buys, part‑grown, and 'finishes' them with techniques he's researched in France.

So what are the differences between Feletti's oysters? The Moonlight Flat angasis are finished by reverse dunking; being very heat sensitive, they are grown fully submerged, but for several weeks before harvest their racks are placed on rails above the low tide mark and spend part of each day out of water. ‘They learn to keep their mouths shut,’ says Feletti. It's essential if they're to have a good shelf-life in a restaurant kitchen.

The Clair de Lune 'buttons' are kept small, delivering a compact, briny hit with each oyster. The Moonlight en Surface are finished in cages suspended on plastic floats on the water's surface. They grow larger and have a softer, creamier, less‑metallic flavour, while Label Rouge are finished to produce a firmer textured oyster, with more 'bite'.

Feletti provides more than a quality product to some of Australia's top restaurants. He believes in after‑market service, such as advice on storage to maximise shelf life ‑ whether they ask for it or not. ‘He was the first supplier reluctant to supply us, one of Melbourne's busiest restaurants,’ says Botanical's chef Paul Wilson, ‘but after much discussion about our handling practices and assurances that we were happy to be guided by him, he relented’. The Melbourne market, Wilson says, is flooded with Pacific oysters and their flavours are quite similar, while ‘Steve's
oysters all taste subtly different and are more delicate and refined, which allows us to offer more depth and a broader range of oysters’.
Sydney's Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay co‑owner Tony Papas has been dealing with Feletti since his first commercial harvest in 1999, when he sent a sample box to then chef Yvan Meunier. ‘We sent him back a message the next morning, raving, and have been receiving a delivery every week for the past seven years,’ says Papas. ‘Steve is quite a character, prodigiously bright and passionate, growing oysters because he loves the whole thing.’

So what's next? Encouraging people to open their own oysters at home, it seems. ‘It is unthinkable in France to pre-shuck and wash oysters. To do so would be the equivalent of buying a case of wine and having the bottle shop open the lids before going home.’ Food for thought.

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Shuck it and see
by Andrew McConnell

This article first appeared in Good Weekend magazine, 14 Oct 2006

Oysters divide people into three groups: (1) oyster lovers; (2) oyster loathers; and (3) those who can’t eat oysters for medical reasons.

For those who do eat them ‑ and I do – we each have our reasons for enjoying oysters. I'm drawn to their texture, two chews (or not) and then the sensual feeling of the mollusc slipping down my throat like something forbidden.

The purity of a not‑too‑cold, freshly shucked oyster to me is the closest you’ll get to a taste of the ocean. An oyster's individual flavour reflects its provenance and its role as a filter of the sea.

Anthony Bourdain once wrote that 'the first man ever to eat an oyster was a very brave man'. I can’t remember precisely the first time I ate one but it was most probably in a suburban pub, and it would have been cooked beyond recognition, topped with bad bacon, doused in Worcestershire sauce and washed down with beer. I'm sure I savoured the taste at the time, unromantic as it seems, it was the first seed of a love affair.

One of my fondest memories since then is of cooking oysters on the shores of Smoky Bay, one of South Australia's best‑known oyster regions. They were large Pacific ones and we cooked them over a barbecue made from a converted 44‑gallon drum. A raging fire was set and, as the sun sank into the ocean, the coals cooled and the oysters were gently cooked until the heat created enough pressure to pop the shells open. This natural, pressure‑cooker style of cooking, complete with inbuilt timer, produced a steamed oyster like no other ‑ firm but not rubbery, with an intense flavour from being poached in its own briny juices. Divine.

The way in which oysters are handled is paramount. I only like to eat and serve oysters that have just been harvested, then shucked to order. The wait ‑ oysters can take time to open ‑ is always rewarded by the quality and freshness.

Oysters commercially available in Australia include Sydney rock, Pacific and angasi, which are also known as flat oysters. Recent DNA tests on local angasi oysters found them to be almost identical to the highly prized French belon oyster.

One local oyster expert following in the footsteps of the famed French farmers is Steve Feletti, who owns and works the Pelican Beach Oysterage on the Clyde River at Batemans Bay, NSW. He's a true artisan, which is why I serve his oysters in my restaurant.

After extensive travel and research, Steve has adopted methods of cultivating oysters practised only in France. His trademark oysters are Clair de Lune Boutom, Moonlight Flat, Moonlight en Surface and Label Rouge. Each has an individual flavour, texture, consistency and size.

Steamed oysters
(serves 2, as an entree)
For as long as I can recall, Supper Inn Cantonese restaurant, a late‑night Melbourne institution, has had this dish of steamed oysters, spring onions and soy on the specials menu. Thank goodness ‑ no way am I going to go home to shuck and steam oysters at three in the morning. This recipe is delicious at any time of the day.

12 freshly shucked oysters
Knob of ginger
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
White pepper
2 spring onions, finely sliced

Peel the ginger, then grate or jullienne it as finely as possible.
In a bowl, mix the light soy, sesame oil, white pepper and ginger together.
Place the oysters in a bamboo steamer with a tight‑fitting lid, arranging them so that they're sitting up straight and none of the juices call escape,
Place the steamer over a pan of rapidly boiling water and cook for about 2 minutes. Be careful not to overcook. The oysters should remain plump and juicy. You want to warm them through rather than reducing them to little briny lumps.
To serve, place a generous pinch of spring onion on each oyster, then top with I tsp of the ginger soy mix.

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Capturing the gout de la mer
by Kirsten Lawson

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times 13 February 2008

Steve Feletti and his wife were having dinner at the Ginger Room restaurant in Canberra a while back, eavesdropping on a rather heated discussion between the maitre’d and a customer about the state of the oyster industry in Australia.

With his very limited French, Feletti worked out that the customer was thoroughly disgusted with Australian oysters.

“So at the end of the night, I said to the maitre’d something along the lines of if that gentleman wants to try some high-quality oysters, here’s my card. The maitre’d said something disparaging about the customer and said send your oysters to us instead.”

Thus the relationship between Moonlight Flat Oysters and the Ginger Room was born.

His Batemans Bay oysters are considered among the finest in Australia. And Feletti supplies some of the country’s best restaurants ‑ Sydney’s Guillaume at Bennelong and the Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay, Melbourne’s the Botanical and the award-winning Lolli Redini, in Orange.

Acclaimed chef Shannon Bennett, of Vue de Monde in Melbourne, recommended Moonlight Flat Oysters in his recent book My French Vue.

There is a waiting list of restaurants chasing Feletti’s oysters – and Vue de Monde is one of them.

Feletti says the oyster market in Canberra has changed over the past five years, but we’re still lagging behind Sydney and Melbourne.

“Canberra’s getting more sophisticated, but it’s not there yet. Melbourne has gone ballistic for the Sydney rock oyster and the angasi.”

Feletti, a former Australian Wheat Board executive, bought oyster leases in Batemans Bay about 10 years ago, sight unseen, “for about the price of a Holden Commodore”. From the start, he says, the philosophy has been to produce the freshest possible hand-selected oysters.

“The key to this artisanal approach lies in a total focus on finishing methods, or what is termed affinage in the French oyster industry, “ Feletti says. “Just like premium wines, coffee or oils, oysters bear their unique signature taste, the gout de la mer determined by their finish and provenance.”

Moonlight Flat cultivates a number of trademarked brands, Clair de Lune Bouton, Moonlight Flat Angasi, Moonlight en Surface, Label Rouge and Rusty Wire. Each is grown on a different spot on the lease and finished in a different way following French traditions researched during regular visits to France’s oyster regions.

“The oyster industry in France is 30 times what it is here and not one oyster is sold pre-shucked. That’s the greatest atrocity that occurs here in NSW,” he says.

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Clair de Lune Sel Saveu®r
Our oyster savoury salt is made in the style of traditional French sel saveur, comprising wholly natural ingredients of seaweed, Moonlight Flat Oysters® and sea salt. READ MORE >


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