Jim Yiannaros, Oyster Shelling Champion at the Narooma Oyster Festival 2022. Photo: Narooma Oyster Festival.
Professional athletes spend years training, but that’s nothing compared to the time it takes to become a competitive oyster sheller.
Fortunately, Jim Yiannaros of Batemans Bay has nearly 50 years of experience.
Australian champion oyster sheller bares his first oyster aged four or five when his father, Costa Yianaros, moved the family to the River Clyde to start oyster farming.
After winning the 2017 Narooma Oyster Festival Shelling Competition for three consecutive years, he was thinking of retiring.
Luckily, he changed his mind and is now heading to the Holy Land of Galway, Ireland, to take on the best players in the world.
South Coast farmers prepare to compete in the world’s most prestigious oyster shelling competition, the World Oyster Opening Championships, on September 24th.
The invitational event is highly competitive, and Yianaros, who won the 2022 Narooma Oyster Festival in May, shucked 30 rock oysters in just 2 minutes and 39 seconds, beating Australia’s best. I was.
He is believed to be the first Australian to compete in the event in nearly 30 years, joining a field of champions from Britain and Europe.
Like the Narooma convention, it is part of a well-known festival, with celebrations and feasts around the main event.
Among them are parachuting into Narooma for this year’s festival and head-to-head with Mr. Yianaros and women’s champion Sally McLean (Jim Wild’s Oysters, Shoalhaven) at the friendly Rock Oyster Shackoff. There’s Stephen Nolan, the Irish champion who faced off from the United States.
Chef Colin Fassnidge counts down Jon Yianaros, Jim Yianaros and Jon Sussman to face off at the 2022 Narooma Oyster Festival. Photo: Provided.
Yianaros was convincingly quicker than Nolan and McLean, but the tide could turn when he faces another race, the Galway Flats.
He practices with angasi, flat oysters native to Australia, obtained from Pip and Dom Boyton of Merimbula Gourmet Oysters.
Boytons has won multiple awards for its oysters and is one of Australia’s few Angasi producers.
“There are only two genes that distinguish our Angasi oysters from Galway Flats, so they are very similar,” Yianaros says.
“The one I’ve been practicing has a very hard shell, which is great. When I get there, I hope the Galway Flats can be opened more easily and I can take the goods home. I have.”
He bought a new knife and shaped the blade himself to suit the long, flat oysters he planned to handle in Galway.
“The knives I use to race at Narooma don’t need long blades. Rock oysters have deep, thick shells that need to be hinged open,” Yianaros said.
“I have two techniques that I’m comfortable with, so when I get there, I’ll be able to go to the bench and hone my technique further.”
But Yianaros isn’t the first South Coast oyster sheller to hit the world stage.
Jim Wilde of Greenwell Point in Shoalhaven is a star of shucking in both Galway and Australia and a veteran shucking world champion who won in 1984 and finished third in the final event in 1993.
The two Jims caught up at Greenwell Point last week and the older gave the young one some valuable tips.
Speed is important in competitive shucking, but so is presentation. The oysters should be clean and sand-free, neatly placed on the shell, and the adductor muscles cut.
Mr. Wilde greatly admired Mr. Yianaros.
“Jim is in great form and really has a chance,” said Wilde. “He’s fast and picky. I think those oysters open up easier than the Angasi he’s been practicing.”
Yianaros thanked the Narooma Rocks team for organizing the annual Narooma Oyster Festival and the Eurobodala Shire Council for supporting the trip.
“Oyster farmers have been through a lot in the last 15 years, but the last two years have been particularly devastating,” he said.
“It is good news for everyone to see events like the Narooma Oyster Festival gaining momentum and putting Australian oysters on the world stage.”
