LOS ANGELES — Ari Kolender knows oysters. His two seafood restaurants — Found Oyster in East Hollywood and Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill in Eagle Rock — serve tens of thousands of oysters a week. Between them they’ve sold well over a million oysters, splayed in platters over ice, tucked into towers of seafood, served raw, grilled or fried (even occasionally buffalo-fried).
So if you want to learn how to shuck oysters properly, who better to ask than Kolender?
Yes, “the process is intimidating,” Kolender said. “You have a sharp knife. You have something fighting against you. Do I use a glove? Do I use a towel? All this stuff. How do I get this hinge to open?
“It’s not easy, but if you know what you’re looking for, it can be.”
The quality of the shuck is important, Kolender said. He’s standing