If you’re a seafood aficionado, you may appreciate the simple deliciousness of oysters on the half shell. This dish is so well-renowned that many restaurants are centered around providing some of the freshest, tastiest oysters available. Nowhere is that truer than on Texas’s Gulf Coast, where oysters are more than just a menu item: they’re practically a way of life.
Oyster bars are nothing new, but the way restauranteurs in Texas are doing things is. These days, there’s a growing number of “tide-to-table” restaurants where patrons can get oysters that were harvested that day. It’s tough to get any fresher than that.
San Leon and Corpus Christi are two of the best spots to find these oyster havens. San Leon sits just south of Houston, and Corpus Christi is farther south within the tropical Texas coastal region known for its seafood shacks. So, if you’ve got a hankering for some oysters, Texas should be on your priority travel list. Dive in and see what these restaurants are all about.
A brief overview of Texas’s tide-to-table oyster bars
Although oysters represent a significant portion of Texas’s seafood industry, they’ve been struggling over the past few years. Various elements, such as hurricane damage, flooding, coastal developments, and overfishing, have all contributed to massive declines in natural oyster populations up and down the coastline. In fact, Galveston Bay used to be the top oyster producer in the region, but its reign has diminished, leaving other areas like Corpus Christi to pick up the slack…