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Venue: George Smith Shellfish, Stall 127, Birmingham Indoor Food Market, B5 4RQ; Website
Choice: Oysters (£1.50 each) Chooser: Omar
Look, half a dozen oysters at 11am might not be everyone's cup of tea but when my office colleague, Omar, found out I'd never been to George Smith's Shellfish in the Bull Ring Markets — a Brummie right of passage that has somehow passed me by — he frog-marched me there. Like most humans, I've never eaten oysters before midday and, if I'm honest, never before an alcoholic drink. I couldn't, hand on heart, say I think they're great. Like Romeo about Juliet, but me about molluscs, I love the idea of loving them and, about once a year, I pay through the nose to find out I still don't. Wondering through the market, it's a gut-punch to see how few stalls remain in business. George Smith has been trading since (and this is mental) 1874! Now run by John who took over from his uncle, who took over from his great uncle, the eponymous George, John tells me there will be no fourth generation running this show. His kids aren't keen. John goes to town on shucking the ten oysters — I talked my pal down from 12, with a bastardised Peep Show quote ringing through my ears: 'Twelve oysters, Omar? Twelve? That's insane'. It occurs to me as John bangs and wriggles and wedges the shells open that someone must have been the first on Earth to do this. And the only thing that can possibly have been going through their head will have been 'when I finally pop this open, no matter what's inside, no matter how unappealing, I'm going slurp it all down.' A tray of unleavened ocean f*ckwhackery appears, glistening and languorous. I'm trying to be nonchalant but coming across as about as chalant as it’s possible to be. Condiment options include lemon, tabasco, vinegar (vinegar!) and not much more. I have my first oyster neat because, oh I don't know, climate change (?) and it's a hit. A silky thwallop of sea and cream, I reach for a non-existent glass of white burgundy to enrich it. An older gentleman in a simply perfect double-breasted jacket asks me for the vinegar before sloshing it all over his fresh pot of cockles and wandering off. A second diner, also alone, goes to work on a whole crab, trading in-jokes with John. This has been happening for decades, hasn't it? A century. More. And the curtain is finally falling, slowly but unstoppably, on George Smith's. I glug back two more oysters, by now playing with lemon and tabasco, chewing sometimes and allowing the sea-nonsense to envelop my gums, playing the opening chords of the French national anthem with my salt receptors. I'm a tourist in my own city, I'm having a ball. We order four prawns the size of racket balls, peel and devein them and slather, this time with sriracha. The meaty snap of the shellfish reigning complementary counterblows down on the slick oysters. And the price? About as quantum-minded as the very creation of the beasts we've banqueted, the entire thing comes in at £20. Twenty pounds to experience 147 years of Birmingham. Shellfish folklore dictates only eating oysters in months with the letter 'r' in — from September to April — to avoid watery sorts. Well, September is well underway, chums. Chop-chop.
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