Last week, Shiny Dimes finally arrived at Kimball House in Decatur.
The first harvest of the farm-raised oysters from Shiny Dimes Oyster Farm in the Florida Panhandle was a dream come true for Bryan Rackley and his Kimball House partners, Matt Christison, Miles Macquarrie and Jesse Smith.
Rackley grew up in South Georgia, and is one of the founding members of Oyster South, a nonprofit network that provides resources for oyster farming across the South, from Texas to Virginia.
Kimball House is one of the premier places to find a wide variety oysters from around the U.S. So it is not surprising that the next logical step for the partners was to own and operate an oyster farm of their own.
Credit: Courtesy of Bryan Rackley
Credit: Courtesy of Bryan Rackley
They keep the Shiny Dimes boat docked at Spring Creek in Wakulla County, a source for fresh local seafood for decades. The oysters are farmed and harvested from three acres of water in an aquacultural-use zone in Oyster Bay.
“If our first time is any indicator that what we’re doing is working, we think we’re doing OK,” Rackley said. “We harvested more than 800 oysters, and 90-plus percent were alive.
“We farm them in floating bags out in the Bay. We keep them off the seafloor at really low densities so they have plenty of access to food in the water, and they grow really fast. The oysters we are selling now are only about eight months old.”
Dubbed “cocktail oysters,” the first of the Shiny Dimes are petite, measuring about 2-and-a-half inches. The flavor is a mild mix of salinity and minerality, with a pleasant earthy mushroom essence.
“They’re a good pairing with a glass of Champagne or a light lager,” Rackley advised while shucking a dozen. “They will get bigger as we scale up and have more in the water. It’s just something we have to manage.
“We have two leases now. One was available and we got it directly from the state. The other we got from a farmer who was getting out of the game. He had a lease and a boat and we said we’ll take both.”
Credit: Bob Townsend
Credit: Bob Townsend
As it turned out, of the first 800 Shiny Dimes that were delivered to the restaurant last week, some 600 were quickly consumed by a crowd of hungry regulars in the course of one evening.
Rackley was both pleased and exhausted by the time service was all over. But it reminded him of a few other milestones in his life.
“I was doing the rundown of my five proudest lifetime achievements,” he said. “Marriage was one. My son Gus was one. There’s the home run I hit in the state championship when I was 12. Opening this restaurant is obviously one, because it’s been a special place from the start and we’re not finished yet. And then there was bringing the Shiny Dimes oysters into the restaurant.”
Shiny Dimes oysters will be regularly available at Kimball House beginning April 21. Reservations are highly recommended. 303 East Howard Ave., Decatur. 404-378-3502; kimball-house.com.
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