Cooking at the source

Rialto chef Jody Adams takes her staff to the Duxbury shore for oysters and a little 'guerrilla grilling'

Jody Adams (center) and members of her staff get a tour of the Island Creek Oysters operation. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)

DUXBURY - Oysters are said to take on the characteristics of the local environment, and a Duxbury oyster has a particularly strong muscle that keeps it clamped tightly shut. Perhaps the same could be said of New Englanders, with their famous reserve. But less than half a mile off Duxbury's prim shores, employees from Cambridge's Rialto restaurant and those from Island Creek Oysters are unhinging oysters and opening right up themselves.

The occasion is the fifth of Jody Adams's impromptu cookouts she calls "guerilla grilling," in which she and her staff drive to a farm, usually one of the restaurant's suppliers, and spontaneously craft a beautiful meal with freshly harvested ingredients. "The idea is just to respond in the moment to whatever is put in front of us," says Adams, chef and owner of Rialto. It's a chance to get growers together with some of the cooks and plenty of eaters to celebrate good food. "It always turns into a party. It's like the perfect potluck!" she says.

So it is that about a dozen Rialto employees, both front and back of the house, pack grills, some veggies, bread, and other kitchen staples into a few cars on a bright, crisp late-September morning and head south to Duxbury, where they're met with half a dozen Island Creek Oyster farmers, headed by Island Creek owner William "Skip" Bennett. His company, started in 1990, sends oysters to elite kitchens around the country, including the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., and Le Bernardin in New York.

When the Rialto team arrives, the sous chefs pile their wares onto a boat and skip across Duxbury Harbor to a small, decorous tan hut anchored several hundred feet offshore. There they fire up grills and begin preparing antipasti, salad, citrus-marinated olives, grilled avocado guacamole, fingerling potatoes, and other savory treats.

Adams and the rest of the crew stay with the farmers and get a lesson in oyster aquaculture: They explain how they get the oysters when they are no bigger than flakes of pepper and grow them to 3-inch beauties, a process that takes about 18 months. Oysters are shipped out the day they're harvested.

About half an hour after the chefs unload at the hut, the rest of the employees climb onto two boats and weave through the white sails dotting the harbor to join them. "Does everybody know how to swim?" asks Bennett, as the motorboat slices through the water.

Later, when they all arrive at the hut - this is where the oysters are usually sorted - they find a long table covered with a red-and-white-checked cloth, set with real plates and flatware, and ringed by piles of crates for seats. Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" wails from a boom box as the chefs watch over smoky grills.

"This is the clubhouse!" Adams cries as the high-spirited bunch unloads onto the dock. Sous chef Andrew Hebert concedes that "it's a little hard to cook on a thing that's moving" as the huts rock on the water and he tosses mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, radishes, and cucumbers with dressing. The acidic aroma of vinaigrette mixes with fresh salty air inside the shack as the oyster farmers reach for Budweisers and waiters grab Smuttynose and Wachusett brews. Kelly Coggins, Rialto's wine and beverage director, uncorks three wines to pair with the shellfish - 2006 Bianchetta Genovese Bisson "Ü Pastine" from Liguria, Italy; 2006 Chablis 1er Cru Domaine Bernard Defaix "Côte de Lechet Reserve" from Burgundy, France; and 2005 Valdeorras Bianco by Rafael Palacios "As Sortes," from Galicia, Spain.

"It really doesn't get any better than this," says Rialto cook Peter McKenzie, sauntering by with his Bass ale. Sous chef Nuno Alves says that the cookouts have helped him appreciate more where the food he works with comes from. But mostly it's a party. "It's normally [for] enjoyment and just getting everybody together. It's like a family," he says.

Adams likens the events to "roving staff parties." After a trip to Sicily last spring, Adams has held five guerilla grilling cookouts. Others have been at Carlisle Farmstead Cheese in Carlisle, makers of goat cheeses; Nesenkeag Farm in Litchfield, N.H., suppliers of produce; Sweetwilliam Farm in Upton, which has vegetables and farm eggs; and White Gate Farm in Dracut, another produce grower. At each stop, the chefs arrive with no plan about what they'll prepare. They let inspiration direct them.

At Island Creek, they find oysters, of course, along with lobsters caught incidentally while fishing for oysters and steamer clams. As the lobsters steam, another boat nears the cookout with a striped bass just pulled from the harbor. Alves seizes it, guts and cleans it effortlessly, and the chefs use some of the meat in a fresh ceviche and grill the rest. The sous chef, his shirt blood-speckled from the unexpected catch, walks by as waiter Tom Radecki samples the dish. "Dude, I wanna make out with you," Radecki announces.

Besides oysters on the half shell and grilled striper, the chefs make grilled avocado guacamole, pickled radishes and cucumbers, tomato and pepper antipasti, fingerling potatoes, citrus aioli, and romesco and remoulade sauces.

On Adams's Sicilian vacation last spring, which was a bike tour of the island, she arranged to stop at restaurants and join the cooks. "It was such a great experience that we decided to do something here," she says. "Also, [it's] just to get outside of our comfort zone."

At home in the Rialto kitchen, cooks have everything they need; the only unknown is the customer. But when you're guerilla grilling, says Adams, everyone gets to enjoy the challenge of working without a plan. "This is completely spontaneous. We didn't know that we'd have a bass and steamers."

One thing was certain: They got to feast on some of the best oysters in the country, with an ample buffet of local foods, on a sunny fall day by the sea. It hardly seemed like work.