Charleston’s Lowcountry Oyster Festival keeps tourist traffic flowing throughout the winter.

GREASY CHEETO COATING ON A STEERING WHEEL CAN MAKE FOR GREAT COMPANY ON A LONG DRIVE, along with a great mixtape and a shaggy dog in the passenger seat. But when it comes to meals on wheels, even the most enthusiastic gas station shopper couldn’t beat the 65,000 pounds of oysters that make their way from New Orleans to South Carolina each year in two heaping truckloads.

This shell-clad road food isn’t for keeping hungry drivers satiated. Instead, it’s for feeding the 11,000 hungry molluscophiles who show up to the Lowcountry Oyster Festival outside Charleston to chow down in the dead of winter. What started as a plan to keep tourist traffic flowing throughout the winter in beach-friendly Charleston has become a yearly tradition featuring oysters cooked every which way—and consumed similarly, complete with an eating competition. 

Kathy Britzius, executive director of the Charleston Restaurant Association (CRA) that organizes the festival every year, says organizers await the arrival of two tractor trailers full of oysters with “huge smiles” on their faces. 

“It’s so much fun,” she said, even if it “sounds a little weird” for folks to get so excited about a load of mollusks.

The oysters signify something larger than just good eats—they mean the continued thriving of a seaside culture all year long in Charleston.

“We’re so close to the beaches, business would drop off,” Britzius said of the initial days of the Oyster Festival nearly 30 years ago. “We really had to bring people back to town.” 

It may have started as a tourism generator, but now it’s a tradition that incorporates many different aspects of Charleston history and cuisine, highlighting the “Lowcountry” name that describes both the southernmost geographical area of South Carolina that sits at or below sea level and is influenced by the diverse social and culinary roots of the American South as well as African, Caribbean, European and Native American cultures.

For the festival, bringing people back to “town” in the wintertime means hosting the event at the 300-year-old Boone Hall Plantation just northeast of Charleston. While the location serves as a popular wedding venue and tourist spot throughout the year, as well as starring as the iconic setting for the television miniseries North and South, it’s also a working plantation. The CRA hosts the Oyster Festival amid hundreds of years of history on the sprawling Boone Hall back lawn.

“The weather can be mild in January here,” Britzius said. 

That’s not the only reason the last-Sunday-in-January festival is scheduled after holidays. Astute observers will note that it’s also not an NFL game day. 

“We do it between the playoffs and the Super Bowl,” Britzius said. 

So everyone’s sure to be free and, of course, looking for a good communal activity on that day—preferably one that involves, just like football watching parties, an awful lot of snacks. Charlestonians automatically know that the Lowcountry Oyster Festival will be on their calendar for the same week every year.

“When you get people in a routine on a large scale like that, they all do it,” Britzius said. 

The festival is especially popular with folks in the hospitality industry who’ve spent the holiday season serving and cooking for other people. At the Lowcountry festival, they can kick back—well, actually, stand up at belly-high tables—and shuck till they’re full.

“Everybody’s working hard, doing all these things for the holidays,” said Britzius, who sees a lot of college-age kids who work in the food and beverage industry relaxing at the Oyster Festival. “It’s real fun, there’s no two ways about that.” 

From 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., oysters are steamed among ancient oak trees over the Boone Hall marsh, and workers stuff buckets of the mollusks that sell for around US$8 each—at about three-and-a-half dozen oysters per, it’s easy to get full fast, for not much cash. Of course, for those who have a larger appetite—say, for six or more cups of straight, un-shucked oysters at a time—there’s the oyster-eating contest. Last year’s winner in the men’s competition ate six-and-a-half cups, while the women’s winner ate three-and-one-quarter cups.

“We used to have [the competition] in the adult area, but as people drink, we had to stop that,” Britzius said. 

Today the competitive oyster eaters are sectioned off in the designated kids’ area to encourage good behavior. Still, the opportunity for a little supervised silliness is welcome, and folks enter the contest up to the last minute. 

“I get guys calling me from 100 miles up the coast, saying, ‘Can I still get in that contest?’” Britzius said.

Despite its name, the Oyster Festival features a variety of foods—“all Southern cooking”—including chili and gumbo. After all, Charleston has become a true culinary destination on the national stage over the past 25 years.

Charleston chefs frequent the acclaimed James Beard Awards in New York, and Britzius says the city is a “great drive market” for neighboring Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as Atlanta, Georgia, and Columbia, South Carolina. But people don’t just come to the Lowcountry by car. The Charleston International Airport sees 128 flights each day to 15 destinations, and cruise ships are common off the South Carolina coast. However they get there, Oyster Festivalgoers come in droves, and Britzius begins planning the event months in advance, all day, every day.

“You just have to do it all the time,” said Britzius, who works with an assistant to make sure 11,000 patrons don’t go hungry. 

With just a couple of months between Taste of Charleston in October and the Lowcountry Oyster Festival, work on one overlaps the other before Britzius can even catch a breath. Still, it’s preferable to the sleepy months of yore.

“Things calm down wherever you have an ocean in the wintertime,” Britzius said.

But the Charleston Restaurant Association seems to have found a profitable and somewhat raucous—if temporary—solution to that age-old maritime problem. For one day in January, “Everyone’s outside acting like a bunch of nuts.” One+

TAGS: Charleston , events , festivals , One+ November 2011 , South Carolina , value of meetings