A sixteen-seat counter on the water at Thesen Harbour Town, Knysna
Take some homeTwo sittings, 12h30 and 18h30. The eight stools at the counter are walk-in only and they go early on a Saturday.
Our oysters sit on trestle tables in the lagoon off the Thesen side, where the tide runs hard enough twice a day to keep them clean and feeding. They go in as spat the size of a thumbnail and come out about eighteen months later, which is why they taste of this lagoon and not of the sea in general — sweet at the front, properly salty at the back. Piet lifts a bag at first light, we rinse them at the counter, and nothing is held longer than a day.
The room is a converted boat shed on the water: a zinc counter, eight stools along it and eight more chairs on the deck outside. Sivuyile has shucked here since we opened in 2016 and gets through about four hundred on a Saturday without looking up. You order by the half dozen, you eat standing if the stools are taken, and the wine list is four bottles long because that is all that fits under the counter.
Everything on the counter was alive this morning or came out of the smoke drum behind the shop. If the bag comes up short we sell out and close the counter early — that has happened four times this year and it will happen again. Ring after eleven and whoever answers will tell you honestly what is left.
