Finding Sea Level

Photos by Donna Campbell

We recently traveled to the landlocked metropolis of Charlotte to hear some talented friends perform as the Thurston Howell Band—so named for the stranded mariners on the ancient TV sitcom “Gilligan’s Island.” The Howell version of Yacht Rock—a 1970s musical genre popular with people who owned yachts in Southern California–drew more than 700 fans to their feet, dancing away the night. Think Christopher Cross, Jimmy Buffett, Steely Dan, Hall and Oates. The whole show was tongue-in-cheek and infectious.

Given the maritime theme of the evening’s promised entertainment, we decided to fortify ourselves beforehand with seafood. December generally being the best month for oysters in North Carolina, did we dare hope for raw-on-the-half-shell in Charlotte? To our delight, we found some of the freshest oysters in the state.

The restaurant, Sea Level NC, promotes itself as having “the only farm-to-fork oyster grown in North Carolina to be served on the half shell.” Owner Paul Manley procures his signature bivalves though a partnership developed with farmers in the town of Sea Level in Carteret County. These proprietary oysters are sustainably harvested and shipped almost daily following Manley’s standards.

The proof of this process is on the walls of the dining room. Digital screens run looped video of North Carolina watermen in rubber-clad waders going out to their saltwater “fields.” There, buoyed cages or floating bags that are filled with developing oysters are regularly tumbled or flipped to help their shells grow deeper, rounder, and stronger. Tumbling thus results in a larger oyster inside the shell. Off bottom aquaculture is also generally cleaner, and the oysters themselves help clean the water. A single oyster can filter 50 gallons of water.

On the screens before us at our table we saw images of oyster “seeds,” called spat, being cultivated in shallow tanks at a hatchery, and white cruisers navigating the pristine channels of the the Core and Pamlico Sounds, trailing bright white wakes. These colorful coastal images, many shot with a drone, were mesmerizing. An eye fetching sculpture of a tree, created from oyster shells, also stood among the concrete pillars in the upscale dining room.

The long raw bar at Sea Level and the oyster tree in the dining room.

Nearly a decade ago as Donna Campbell and I were researching the final chapter of the book The Month of Their Ripening: North Carolina Heritage Foods Through the Year, (still available in paperback), we drove more than 400 miles visiting coastal restaurants in search of wild-caught, native NC oysters. They were not to be found. Oysters from Virginia and points farther north were being shipped in and sold by fishmongers–retail and wholesale. Oyster farming then was a nascent industry in the state, and its viability was in question. Now, I am happy to report, it is a major trend, and Sea Level Restaurant is a welcome pioneer.

As our friend Frank Graff pointed out in a story this year on the PBS North Carolina website, by 2022, oyster farming in North Carolina waters had grown by 500 percent since 2012. Two years ago oyster farms contributed $14.6 million to the state’s economy with growth continuing.

“We have more than 300 oyster and clam farms along the coast, and because they are using more efficient technology than in past years, they have defied the odds to become profitable,” Jane Harrison of North Carolina Sea Grant told Graff. “It’s exciting to see the exponential growth of these small family farms, especially in producing such a delicious and environmentally important and sustainable seafood.”

Posted in the raw bar, Sea Level’s oyster menu listed nine varieties from all over the U.S. and Canada. We ordered the Sea Level Salts and the Cedar Island Selects, also a North Carolina favorite. They came beautifully presented in very clean, chilled shells and served with a white fennel mignonette, a pomegranate and ginger mignonette, and the restaurant’s own cocktail sauce with a few extra shakes of Worcestershire sauce. Small sticks of homegrown horseradish sat atop the cocktail sauce. It was a flavorful horseradish, not one to take off the top of your head, but more like a daikon radish. I could not pick a favorite among these distinctive accompaniments.

Left: The Sea Level Salts (top four) Cedar Selects (bottom four) Right: Flounder picatta with scallops. A video screen in the dining room lets everyone see where dinner comes from.

The Sea Level Salts were aesthetically pleasing with a dark, even fringe and a creamy middle, not too salty. The Cedar Islands were fatter with what I would call a true oyster taste and were saltier. Both very satisfying.

To be ecumenical we tried the Poblano creamed corn soup. The corn was crunchy, the cream flavored with onion, and the chopped poblano flavorful without burning. The clam chowder was generous with clams but a bit too garlicky for my taste.

We also ordered the flounder picatta, resting on a bed of asparagus, flavored with grilled lemon and a white wine caper sauce. The delicate fish shone through, not too much sauce, while the garlic marscapone mash of potatoes was a welcome accompaniment.

Sea Level offers many other fish and shellfish in season with a range of treatments, including several Asian dishes. It seemed to be a family place— casual with big leather booths and a busy raw bar that stretched the length of the largest room. Our server also offered us an off-menu side of scallops and a lobster tail when we ordered—clearly an upsell, but a nice thought. Being in Charlotte, the crackers that came with the oysters were naturally the hometown favorite, Lance. But McIlhenny Tabasco from Louisiana was a surprise, since we were so close to the origins of Texas Pete in Winston Salem.

Beyond this adventure, we’ve also been this month to Moore Street Oyster Bar in Southpoint on the coast and were pleased to find native Stumpy Point oysters from Dare County along with some Blue Points from the North, also the favored oyster at Acme, our neighborhood restaurant in Carrboro.

It is exciting that North Carolina, with the second largest estuarine system in the country, has begun studying the practices of the indigenous peoples who maintained abundance in their oyster harvest practices here for millennia, according to Coastwatch magazine. Reclaiming habitats lost to overharvesting, stormwater runoff, and other forms of pollution is underway in the state’s oyster sanctuaries. According to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, we now one of the most active shellfish restoration efforts in the country.