Nantucket Bay Scallops
“We call them the candy of the sea,” Peter Ramsden, the head fishmonger of Foley Fish Co., says about Nantucket bay scallops. The fourth-generation leader of the New Bedford, Massachusetts seafood purveyor, explains the bivalve’s distinction: “Because of the remote, pristine and rugged environment of the upper Nantucket Harbor and Madaket, the Nantucket bay scallops seem to store more energy than scallops grown anywhere else. They really are the sweetest of all the seafood we sell.” So sweet that he’s a fan of eating them raw.
The scallop, as a genus, is the beauty queen of the mollusk world, with symmetrical, fan-shaped shells. The most common are large sea scallops, which can grow to the size of a bread plate. The diminutive bay scallop, with shells a few inches in diameter and meat the size of a thumb tip, is rarer. But perhaps the most coveted variety of bay scallops are those that come from the cold waters off Nantucket Island near Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. And now is the time to try them.
The commercial season for Nantucket bay scallops runs from November 1 through the end of March. Fishermen in small boats ply the shallow, eel grass-filled waters near shore for the prize. One doesn’t think of speed as a shellfish attribute, but scallops can really move. They swim by clapping their shells together to escape danger, making them the Usain Bolts of the mollusk world. That swimming strengthens the animal’s cylindrical adductor muscle, the target of seafood lovers.
Chef Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin, perhaps the most acclaimed seafood chef in the world, says that when it comes to cooking a Nantucket bay scallop, less is more. He prefers to serve them warm and marinated or “barely warmed, with a lemony-rich broth.” Their sweetness and texture make them special, he says.
As with so many rarities, these don’t come cheap. “Last year,” says Ramsden, “the industry set a new price record . . . a retail store buying these would likely charge between $60 and $70 a pound . . . I don’t see this changing much once the 2022/2023 season opens up, unless we get lucky and see a banner crop coming off the island.”
