A Shucking Good Time with SOM’s Oyster Society
SOM students are teaching each other to appreciate oysters and embrace the New Haven marine community. Sanitra Desai ’26, Umar Qureshi ’26, and Ben Rosenthal ’26 reflect on their experience forming a new student group.
We started out as three SOM friends in a New Haven living room, watching an ASMR oyster mukbang—one of those captivating videos where creators savor mountains of food and describe it to viewers in perfect, amplified detail. It was oddly mesmerizing, and we wondered if we could recreate that feeling in real life—minus the cameras, plus a room full of friends. What if we brought that same curiosity, focus, and fun to campus?
Sanitra, our honorary “mermellier” (a sommelier for oysters…it’s a real thing!), had lots of knowledge about tasting notes and oyster varieties from her time spent in New England. Ben, a leader of SOM’s Food, Agribusiness, and Beverage Club, had just learned how to shuck oysters (from an SOM partner who is a Michelin-trained chef!) and was excited to share his new skill. And Umar—who grew up in the landlocked Midwest but loved going to oyster happy hours with his coworkers—pondered what it would take to host an oyster happy hour at SOM.
New Haven, it turns out, was the perfect place to answer those questions. The city has deep oyster roots—there’s even a shucking knife named after it. One Friday night, we picked up a few dozen oysters, bought some tools, and invited a handful of friends over. We had no plan beyond “don’t cut ourselves.” By the end of the night, the counter was covered in shells, our hands were sore, and everyone wondered: When could we do this again?
That test run turned into the Oyster Society, a student-run initiative that operates independently of SOM. At the end of last year, we ran a few more pilot events that helped us refine how we’d source the oysters and manage sign-up, setup, and cleanup (crucial, if we want to prevent our houses from smelling like the ocean). By the time this school year began, we were ready to hit the ground running—bringing first-year students into the events, attempting more ambitious themes, and becoming far better teachers of oyster merroir (the nuanced taste and texture shaped by the waters where each oyster grows—also a real word!) and shucking technique.
The Slack channel we began as a lighthearted joke now has over 200 members. What started as a kitchen experiment typically sells out in under two minutes. Each event features three rounds of oysters with Sanitra’s expert tasting notes, food and drink pairings curated by Ben, and venue and ambiance provided by Umar. Guests rotate between two activities: one group is taught how to shuck the next flight of oysters while the other half chats and eats some bites. We ensure that groups are mixed across classes and cohorts so everyone meets a new face or two. By the end, everyone leaves with a new skill, new friends, a full stomach, and occasionally a Band-Aid.
To keep things fresh and fun, we theme our events throughout the year: Peruvian night with a leche de tigre oyster dipping sauce, Halloween “spooky shucks” in costume, backyard BBQs with grilled oysters, and even a collab with Cocktail Club featuring personalized dirty martinis. While the event has become more sophisticated, the heart of it hasn’t changed: good food, good people, good times, and the joy of learning something new together.
As the society continues to grow, we’ve looked for ways to connect with the New Haven oyster community. We brought in our classmate Daniel Yang to share how his startup, ShellVive, is upcycling oyster shells. We now recycle our shells after each event with the nonprofit Collective Oyster Recycling & Restoration to support their coastal restoration program. These partnerships imbue the events with an added layer of meaning, showing that the community we are growing is a force for good. The behind-the-scenes of Oyster Society often is far from glamorous (we’ve learned that cars don’t smell very good after transporting 12 dozen oysters from Milford), but it’s one of the most rewarding projects we’ve undertaken as students.
The biggest lessons for us haven’t been about the oysters, but what it means to lead a community. We get so much joy and pride from seeing first-years, second-years, and partners—people who might never have crossed paths otherwise—end up side by side, learning to shuck, swapping stories, and laughing through the same struggles.
Because at the end of every event, when the last shell is shucked and the kitchen hums with conversation, we always see the same thing: nobody wants to leave.
