Last week, I was enjoying a couple of dozen oysters with a friend, talking, of course, as oyster-lovers do, about…oysters! It wasn’t long before I began my habitual rant about the best oysters in the world, those harvested in cold weather on the west coast of France (preferably consumed either on the coast or in a Parisian brasserie, with buckets of Muscadet). But my friend recoiled. “No no no,” she said. “Those oysters are too briny!” And the rift widened immensely…because it is exactly their brininess that makes them so devastatingly appealing to me!