Robert Wilkanowski

Long Island City

My vote: The Oyster

I am currently reading Mark Kurlanky's fascinating history of New York. Here are two quotes from the preface:

"The fact that oysters are about the only food eaten alive is part of what makes them a unique gastronomic experience—that and the sense that no other food brings us closer to the sea."

The history of New York oysters is a history of New York itself—its wealth, its strength, its excitement, its greed, its thoughtlessness, its destructiveness, its blindness and—as any New Yorker will tell you—its filth. This is the history of the trashing of New York, the killing of its great estuary.

Kurlansky, Mark (2007-01-09). The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell . Random House Trade Paperbacks. Kindle Edition.

The very existence of New York first as a native American settlement, and later as a great city has largely to do not just with it's relationship with the sea and inland water-ways, but more significantly with it's surrounding tidal estuary...a beautiful and abundant natural food source that has all but disappeared.