WELLFLEET — Lili Hay has been shucking oysters since she was seven years old, though she says her technique has evolved since then. “My dad taught me,” she says. “But also Jimmy Vassel and others at the raw bar at Mac’s Shack — because everybody has a little different way of doing it.”
Now a senior at Nauset Regional High School, Hay has worked a lot of different jobs at her family’s businesses — scooping ice cream, running food, working in the fish market. “Maybe what I’ve liked best,” she says, “is staying late and seeing all the work that happens after a restaurant closes for the night.”
Last Wednesday, Hay gave a photographer a lesson in shucking “the best oysters in the world.”
“It’s so satisfying to be able to eat something so fresh, right from the ocean,” she says. The hardest step, Hay adds, flipping over another oyster, is the last one: “Put the oyster on ice and do not eat it until you’ve shucked enough for everyone.”
