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Kimball House partner Bryan Rackley left little doubt about the quantity of oysters shucked and eaten at the Decatur restaurant when he posted a photo to Instagram of one million shells being scooped up by a backhoe on Tuesday.
Rackley arranged the pick-up from Kimball House with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources for their use in restoring a portion of a reef just off the Georgia coast. He went on to say in the post, “This will be home to lots of wild oysters one day” and thanked the “good work” of Kimball House, the partners’ new Krog Street Market restaurant Watchman’s Seafood, and Oyster South.
Rackley is the co-founder of Oyster South; a non-profit focused on teaching and maintaining sustainable oyster farming practices in the Southeastern and Gulf Coast regions.
Kimball House also posted a photo to Facebook stating, “1,000,000 oyster shells making their way to the Georgia coast to [be] part of a reef restoration project.”
That astonishing mountain of bivalve shells were shucked in most part by one man: Kimball House employee, He Ro. The 25-year-old immigrated to the United States when he was 15 having never seen or shucked an oyster in his life before he began working for the restaurant in 2013. So, it really was no exaggeration when the 2018 Eater Young Gun semifinalist said he’d shucked “close to one million” oysters in five years.
Kimball House is hosting the annual “Landlocked” Oyster South fundraiser on Sunday, October 21, featuring over 20 oyster farmers and 15 chefs from around Atlanta and the Southeast.
