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Jerry Fraser has a pathological hatred of Oysters Kilpatrick. He is a purist.
“A la naturel or maybe a sauce mignonette,” the impish bivalve botherer enthuses. “That’s it.”
If he had a microphone, he would have dropped it.
Jerry Fraser at Il Lido.Credit: Ryan Cubbage
WA’s high-profile oyster shucker has opened oysters for Western Australians for a generation. Very few of us in the past 20 years have not been in a pub, a restaurant, a bar, at a multi-millionaire’s private house party or a foodie festival and not had an oyster from Fraser. So just how many oysters does an oyster shucker shuck?
“Millions,” he exclaims. “None of them Kilpatrick, by the way.”
The legendary shucker is expanding his reach with the announcement this month that he will be presenting new weekly gigs at Shui in Subiaco and Mayfair Lane in West Perth, complementing his much-loved shows at Il Lido, Canteen Pizza, and monthly gigs Bright Tank brewery East Perth, Baan Baan and Peasant’s Paridice, both in Northbridge. He did a weekly gig at Must Winebar in Highgate for nine years before it closed, and has done scores of invitation gigs in Singapore and Bali.
The word “shows” is accurate. Fraser’s shucking gigs are a rollicking, ebullient floor show punctuated with Tourettes-like, random call-outs of waiter’s names. “Joey! Joey! JOEY! IT’S JOEY EVERYONE!” he yells across the floor at Canteen Pizza announcing a hapless waiter who wandered in stage left.
Every day is a shellabration for Fraser. He presses the flesh with customers, jokes with tables who appear rapt in his verbal meanderings and heaps lavish and loud praise on front of house staff.
“She’ll be Australia’s next big thing!” he yells across the room at no one in particular, pointing to a beaming young waitress. It’s dinner and a show and the curtain is up. Like all seasoned performers Fraser also knows when to shut up and let people get on with their evening. He cleverly embraces the old showbiz adage, leave ’em wanting more.
It’s a long way from the back blocks of La Oroya in Peru, boarding school in England and university in Tampa Florida where he completed his degree in geology.
“Love bacon and eggs. Love oysters. The two don’t go together.”
These days the 67-year-old self-styled “very naughty boy when I was young” sports a Papa Hemmingway beard and a gap-toothed smile as he cheerfully flicks the tops off another dozen for a table of fans.
Born in Inverness in Scotland, he left for Peru as a toddler with his mining engineer father and was schooled there until 11 years old. He still speaks fluent Spanish. Then it was off to a “very strict” English boarding school. University in Tampa followed where he had his first taste of the hospitality industry, working as an oyster shucker to help put himself through college.
In 1978, the celebrated Copper Top oyster bar in Tampa asked him to help run an offshoot restaurant. He ate for free, was paid illegally and finished his geology studies. “It was two years of bliss.”
After a year back at the high altitude Oroya mine he headed for London where he ran the Bentley Oyster Bar in the West End and the seafood counter at the Savoy. In 1988, while helping a mate with his restaurant in Spain, he met a West Australian girl and by 1996 he was married and in Perth with Fiona and two young boys.
“I don’t really know how I became a professional oyster shucker. I started doing it and found I loved it, especially the interaction with customers. I still love it.”
We have a few questions for the self-styled “Shukka Khan.”
The most important question facing us in 2023, is what happened to the trend – short-lived thank God – of chefs piling flavoured granitas and sorbets on to raw oysters?
“People are more interested in fresh product these days, so why get vulgar and start adding things to them? Granita and sorbet on oysters is dead. Serve ’em plain.”
And what about his anti-Kilpatrick stance?
At Rottnest Island back in 2008.
“Love bacon and eggs. Love oysters. The two don’t go together. Eat them separately. Don’t forget Oysters Kilpatrick and all the other cooked and topped oysters were designed back in the day, before modern refrigeration and short supply chains, to camouflage oysters that weren’t too fresh.”
Oysters Rockefeller?
“Eeergh. Why?”
Panko crumbed?
“Nope! Again, why?”
With horseradish cream?
“Are you kidding?”
Oysters Florentine?
“Nah. Why? Fresh, just-shucked oysters with a little buttered dark rye bread is a classic you should try, but natural is best.”
Leave the oysters alone.
With that, he’s off to another table to do his Vaudevillian schtick and bat away the lascivious question he always gets from blokes: “So do oysters work? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”
“I couldn’t say,” he replies.
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