At a recent G&G team dinner not meant to be about work, we all gathered around the table at Chubby Fish to enjoy some camaraderie and small plates. One by one, as my colleagues sampled the loaded grilled oysters, their eyes lit up—and we knew we’d found a story after all. Starting with this transcendent dish, we’re launching the One Perfect Bite series, in which we spotlight a single, bucket-list-worthy dish in the South. —L.L.
At around four every afternoon except Monday on Coming Street in the more residential bit of downtown Charleston, a line starts to wind around the block: hopeful diners, waiting to eat at Chubby Fish. James London opened the small, forty-seat restaurant back in 2018, serving a rotating cast of local seafood and seasonal plates with wild and wonderful twists of global flavors. There might be amberjack crudo with avocado puree and chili ponzu, lamb ribs with Spanish romesco sauce, and yellowfin tuna with soy and Thai basil. Everything on the menu is a delight—and part of the fun is how that menu constantly changes—but there are a few dishes that have earned a permanent place on the chalkboard. One of them in particular, the crab fat curry grilled oyster with cashews, will knock your socks off.
Six oysters arrive on a bed of rock salt studded with peppercorns, swimming in a buttery crab fat curry and sprinkled with puffed rice and caramelized cashews. Each one, slid from its shell, is an explosion of flavor so nuanced and perfectly balanced that the experience is greater than its many moving parts—briny oyster, sweet crab, crunch of rice and cashew, brightness of lime, and the finishing pop of cilantro.
Here’s the anatomy—and the backstory—of this perfect bite, according to London.
Inspiration: Every year I do an event called Landlocked in Atlanta to benefit oyster farmers. It’s my favorite festival we do all year, and you collaborate with another chef. I was paired with Cheetie Kumar, and we had an absolute blast creating it. I brought some crab and cashews. She had fun stuff like this Indian puffed rice. We’d planned on the phone, and it took us two hours of workshopping it before we were ready to serve five hundred of them.
Execution: We cook down blue crabs, run them through a food mill, and get this crushed crab essence. We add our aromatics—like Thai chilies, cilantro, shallots, garlic, black peppercorns, curry seeds—to that. Then we reduce the coconut cream down until it snaps and sauté that beautiful aromatic crab paste in that. Then we add a little bit of coconut milk and let that reduce down with a bunch of basil and strain that out after it marinates. That’s our base. That goes up into the broiler [on the oysters]. Once it’s all broiled and caramelized and starting to cook a little bit we pull that down.
We make a kaffir lime leaf oil and string that out over an ice bath to get this great green, aromatic oil, and four or five drops of that go over the top of the oyster, plus some lime zest. And then for the actual crunch on top, we’re taking the cashews and we’re caramelizing them in grapeseed oil. We add them to poha, the puffed rice, and we just fry them in grapeseed oil. That gets spun out with a little bit of dehydrated Thai chili powder and a little bit of dehydrated lime juice. We add a little bit of our Thai red curry powder and salt, too. And then we hit it with two drops of fresh lime juice.
Flavor: The short answer is harmony. It’s a really truly balanced, deep, and developed dish. You’re going to get spice. You’re going to get sweet from the coconut cream and the crab itself. You’re going to get this bright herbal note from the cilantro.
Dirty secret: Cheetie and I created this dish probably three years ago. It took me two years to put it on my menu because I knew that once I did, I could never take it off. I held off because this is pretty complex…I hate those dishes that I have to keep on. I don’t like being forced to have a certain menu and not be able to play with it. I knew it would be like the caviar sandwich or smoked fish curry, and that I would hate myself if I did take it off.
