The Water Tables

There is a kind of American town where the food has a home address, where the oysters on the table grew within sight of it and the boats that caught lunch are tied up outside the restaurant, and this edition is devoted to them. The water tables are not food destinations in the modern sense, since nothing there was invented for visitors. They are working waterfronts that happen to set an excellent table, and the difference is the whole point.

Eating in these towns comes with a calendar. The Nantucket bay scallops arrive in the cold months and not before, the Wellfleet oysters are at their best when the water is coldest, the May River opens its season when the water cools in fall, and the Maine lobster towns run on the rhythm of the boats. The visitor who learns the calendar eats better than any reservation can arrange, and is treated accordingly.

This edition works the coasts. It goes to Wellfleet, where the cold water of Cape Cod Bay farms the country's most famous oyster, to St. Michaels on the Chesapeake, where the crab house and the maritime museum share a harbor, to Bluffton and Cedar Key in the warm South, to New Orleans, which takes its oysters standing up and always has, and up the lobster coast of Maine, port by port, in the correct order.

Order what the water is producing that week, ask the counterman rather than the menu, and eat the famous thing in the place that made it famous at least once, without irony. The water tables have been setting this table for generations. The only obligation is to arrive hungry and in season.