The Oyster & The Pearl

No I am not obsessed with oysters; it's pure coincidence, honestly. I was talking about oysters in my earlier Blog today as oddity in the use of exclamations, then I read about this little creature again today. Casa Hidalgo (This name in Spanish means Nobleman or Squire's House) is a Bar/Restaurant in Sitges, Barcelona. A family business for 25 years and very popular with the locals. Yesterday, apart from the many usual clients, some reporters showed up, even with photographers in tow, taking pictures to record a rare 'event'.

Josep Rosell is a regular customer who eats there several time every week. Yesterday he ordered one of his favourite starters, half a dozen oysters. The very first one he opened up, he got the biggest and happiest surprise in his life, sitting prettily right in one corner of the shell was a perfectly shaped, rather big, bright, round and beautiful pearl, still attached to the membranes of the oyster. A natural pearl. Even in the black and white photo it looks shiny.

Considering the fact that it's extremely rare for natural pearl to be found inside of an oyster, as the studied statistics say it's one pearl in each 15,000 oysters. Nearly all the ones sold as jewellery stores are cultivated ones. Natural pearls are formed only when an foreign object has somehow got into, and attached to the tissue or membrane inside an oyster, totally by chance. To combat the irritation caused by the invasion of this foreign body, the oyster segregates what's called nacre, a sheeny substance that wraps up the foreign body, which evolves and grows with it to become a natural pearl. The eventual size and colour of this depends on that of the foreign object that has taken up residence inside the oyster.

Jose Yanez, the owner of the seafood bar, said that for less than one year, this is the 2nd Tim a natural pearl had been found in the oysters he sold in the bar, never before in the previous 20+ years. The lucky customer was so happy he didn't even want to take the pearl out, but said he wanted to find means of preserving it as it is, inside and attached to the oyster.

How he could achieve this is beyond me, as the oyster is now dead! I guess he has to consult various experts for this venture, the ones who know all there's to know about oysters, and those who can suggest the correct and viable ways to preserve them both, the oyster and the pearl.

Tags:oyster,pearl,bar

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