Taylor Shellfish Farms Tom Stocks Talks Oysters, Clams, Geoducks, and White Wine

Tom Stocks of Taylor Shellfish Farms joins us in this episode to chat about Oysters and more.

Taylor Shellfish Farms started farming shellfish in the Puget Sound in 1890. Much has changed about how Oysters, Clams, and Geoducks are farmed since the 1890’s Tom shares a ton of information about Taylor Shellfish works to insure that the shellfish you enjoy today will be available in the future. Sustainable is the focus every single day.

We learn about what makes the Oysters of Puget Sound some of the most desirable Oysters in the world today.

Tom shares how he trains his staff how to shuck Oysters blindfolded so that they can effortlessly and safely shuck hundreds of Oysters daily at Taylors Oyster Bars. Tom has even designed a knife that makes the process easy and safe.

Tom explains why they do not serve red wine at their restaurants. (the shellfish come first)

Baseball, beverages, food and more help round out the episode.

Taylor Shellfish Tom Stocks Episode Transcript

Scott Cowan [00:00:00]:

So I so this sounds like a scam. So you guys get to go on vacation to take over. I I don’t know. I mean, why Well,

Tom Stocks [00:00:06]:

it might be a scam if more of us were going over there.

Todd Phillips [00:00:28]:

Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. Here’s your host, Scott Cowan.

Scott Cowan [00:00:34]:

Alright. So my guest today is Tom Stocks. Tom is with Taylor Shellfish Company. I’m gonna let him tell you what his real job title is. So, Tom, welcome. We persevered through some technical challenges, which has been the theme today. You didn’t know that, but every guest has had technical challenges today. And, so welcome.

Scott Cowan [00:00:52]:

Thank

Tom Stocks [00:00:53]:

you. Thank you for having me.

Scott Cowan [00:00:54]:

Tell us about you.

Tom Stocks [00:00:57]:

Well, my name’s Tom Stocks. I work for a company named Taylor Shellfish Farms. And I, after building their restaurant group for nine years, then moved down last year to take over as director of sales. So now I oversee selling everything that we grow, hopefully, at a reasonable pace. So

Scott Cowan [00:01:19]:

Okay. So well, let’s talk about what what do you grow? What what are the products that you guys are currently growing in the Washington area? Because I I didn’t realize this. It looks like you guys actually have some stuff in Hawaii?

Tom Stocks [00:01:34]:

Hawaii is where all the babies grow. So it’s kind of a intricate process. But

Scott Cowan [00:01:41]:

Oh, okay.

Tom Stocks [00:01:41]:

What we grow are are bivalve shellfish, which, are animals, but they live their lives as plants. So, you know, for all intents and purposes. So what we do is we plant oysters, mussels, clams on the ground or in the water, and then we let them grow up and then harvest them every week and sell them. Okay. Yeah. And that process begins at our hatchery up in Quilseen Bay. And then for some of the products, there’s an intermediate step where they go to Kona and go from micro larvae up to what we’d call plantable seed. So that’s how we work the Hawaii into the whole thing.

Scott Cowan [00:02:27]:

So this sounds like a scam. So you guys get to go on vacation to take over. I don’t know. I mean, why

Tom Stocks [00:02:33]:

Well, it might be a scam if more of us were going over there.

Scott Cowan [00:02:36]:

Okay. So I know I know nothing about this process, but why if you’re doing them in Quillscene Bay, why why Kona? Why why are they going to Hawaii?

Tom Stocks [00:02:49]:

Well, maybe about thirty years or so ago, the government in Hawaii found this, fascinating site that was about 3,000 feet deep below the the the island down on kind of the old volcanic floor. And it has this extremely nutrient rich, heavily oxygenated water. And they dropped a pipe 3,000 feet down to where this kind of water, I mean, is it a spring? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you that exactly. But it’s the Kona Deepwater site, and what they do is they pump up this water, up and then feed it into a business park where there is a oyster hat, oyster nursery for us. They grow sea cucumbers and abalone and spiny lobster and all different kinds of, you know, aquaculture projects. They benefit from this extremely nutrient rich water. And then for us on top of that, the clams themselves, because it’s mainly clams that go to Hawaii, they love the warm weather and infant stage.

Tom Stocks [00:03:58]:

And then it’s also very easy for us to produce algae with that level of photosynthesis going on at all times. So when, you know, you think sending clams to Hawaii, you know, that’s gotta be a real arduous process. Like, millions of clams, I mean, they’re about the size of coffee grounds when they go

Scott Cowan [00:04:23]:

over. Oh. And Okay.

Tom Stocks [00:04:25]:

Yeah. And then they come back, you know, they’re, like, 10 times the size or something. Still not very big. So Okay. It’s just that very beginning intermediate process between when they actually go to the beach, and when they and when they left the hatchery that some of them will go over to to, Kona to take advantage of this rich water and sunny sunny weather, and then they’ll come back over and be reminded that they’re going to live in the Puget Sound.

Scott Cowan [00:05:00]:

Yeah. There’s no shock there. Oh my gosh. Okay. So that’s I had no I had no clue that the clams are going to the beach, much less going to Kona. It sounds like a glamorous life. I mean, I just, you know, just kid. But I also It’s hard work.

Scott Cowan [00:05:20]:

But you’re the director of sales, and you’re not I’m not going to say you’re a science guy, and you lost me on a lot of that already. So how long does it take to grow a clam to a sellable size?

Tom Stocks [00:05:36]:

About three, four years. And then every product we have, there’s a different window. Yeah. So

Scott Cowan [00:05:45]:

how about, like,

Tom Stocks [00:05:45]:

oysters? People will well, people will always, you know, say, how old is this oyster? And then I’ll tell them very confidently and they’ll go, how could you ever know that? And honestly, the size of an oyster is pretty indicative of its age. So it’s not so much that, you know, when we plant them so we know when they when they kind of, get started. But an oyster will variably reach market size anywhere from twelve months to five years, depending upon the species and then the size we wanna grow it to. Pacific oyster, that’s the most popular or the most common oyster grown for aquaculture, mariculture all around the world, 90%. And that is the oyster that everyone is used to seeing with the frilly shells and slightly irregular, shape. And we sell oysters that are, you know, the smallest size would be, about two inches and the largest would be seven to nine. And Woah. That, yeah.

Tom Stocks [00:06:52]:

So that is just a number of seasons of them just getting to mature up to that large size. So that’s taste standpoint.

Scott Cowan [00:07:04]:

From a taste standpoint, does that oyster does a two year old oyster taste a lot different than a five year old oyster?

Tom Stocks [00:07:13]:

Yes and no. You know, oysters, you eat them whole. Right? So when you’re tasting if you put two oysters from the same beach, and you grew them now one little thought it says there is that if you planted two oysters at the same time, you would eat the one that’s, two inches long about five years before the one that’s seven inches long. Right. So Right. Who knows what happened in those five years.

Scott Cowan [00:07:43]:

Okay. But,

Tom Stocks [00:07:46]:

you know, the beauty of an oyster comes from you’re eating its whole body at once. So the more mature that an oyster gets, the more robust its body will become. So as oysters get fatter and larger, you see them drift away from being kind of, a cold glass of salt water to something that’s much more, developed and rich. And that is through the process of them beefing up their bodies and accumulating, amino acid called glycogen that is something the animals produce to deal with the salinity of their environment and that we find to be lip smacking delicious with, and all those kinds of interesting flavors that come apart come with the oyster. Alright.

Scott Cowan [00:08:36]:

So mhmm. So let’s okay. Wow. This could go I can I can go down so many rabbit holes on this thing?

Tom Stocks [00:08:44]:

How did

Scott Cowan [00:08:44]:

you get start let’s talk about you first. How did you get started in with with Taylor? What what brought you into this into this business?

Tom Stocks [00:08:54]:

Well, I I I got a degree from University of Washington, and I graduated during the financial crisis of the aughts. Okay. And so I started working at a bar,

Scott Cowan [00:09:06]:

you know, as a lot of

Tom Stocks [00:09:08]:

people did. And then I was, you know, really inspired to become a chef, and pursued, you know, I thought, okay. Well, if I do this, I need to be, like, extremely well trained and all that stuff. So I applied for the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan. I’m not sure if it’s around still or not, but got in and then kinda did the math about how many thousands of dollars I would spend to, pay for the tuition and live in New York and do all that stuff. And I had just kind of this, realization that I could, you know, spend all this money and incur all this debt to fit in with a a community that was really far from where I was from and hopefully that I I made it there, or I could come home and use my, for lack of a better term, competitive advantage to represent a place that I was from. So instead of trying to go play their game, I was like, well, I’m just gonna make up my own game and then I’m gonna be good at it. So I kinda took stock of everything that we had in our region.

Tom Stocks [00:10:27]:

I got really involved with my friends, in, you know, foraging and picking mushrooms and fishing and all that stuff. And then oysters and clams and geoduck was just, I mean, that was like, you go to a beach, it’s a grocery store, you know the tide, you do a little bit of work, and you can get, you know, truly iconic Northwest ingredients, for next to nothing. So I immediately started getting kind of interested in oysters, and just eating a lot of them, and I, was like okay I think this might be kind of something that I’m into, And I was looking for a new job. I’ve been working at Jazz Alley for a long time, which I still love, but I needed to kinda get something going with what I wanted to do, and Taylor Shellfish was looking for people to open up the Melrose Market store. And I applied, and I got the job. And then once I kinda got myself into that world, then I just really ran with it and it kind of seemed to make a lot of sense to me. So pushing that agenda and kind of building out a restaurant group and then moving on to sell things just was all very, very natural for me. After I made that decision to essentially, you know, what I tell my, you know, my people all the time is that I wanna, you know, sell the Northwest to the world.

Tom Stocks [00:12:03]:

And then if I’m feeling a little salty, I’ll tell them that I want them to kiss the ring because I just think that we have world class ingredients here, and they are beloved around the world. Trust me. As someone who’s now been shipping them around there, I understand how much people love our ingredients, but I think that there’s an even greater appreciation that we’re trying to build from a mass appeal standpoint that when you think about the Puget Sound and the Pacific Northwest, you think the best oysters in the world come from there. And so kinda, you know, emotionally, thematically, that’s what guides me is, you know, this idea that I would I mean, I’m Puget Sound, born and raised, Big Harbor, Washington. And, I just want everyone to know what what we have. So, that was kinda how I came up with it. And then, man, by the time I dip my toe in, I I I couldn’t slow it down. It just seemed to kind of snowball, And I just said yes to all the opportunities, and here we

Scott Cowan [00:13:21]:

are. Wow. Okay. So that’s a cool story. But before I ask you the next part of my question, I’m going to totally go off topic. You mentioned Jazz Alley. What was the coolest act you ever saw or heard play at Jazz Alley?

Tom Stocks [00:13:37]:

You know, I

Scott Cowan [00:13:38]:

Has nothing to do with shelter.

Tom Stocks [00:13:42]:

Well, I was very I mean, I worked at Jazz Alley specifically to watch straight ahead jazz.

Scott Cowan [00:13:48]:

Okay.

Tom Stocks [00:13:48]:

And so I always looked forward to, Roy Hargrove Quintet that I just love may he rest in peace, I love Roy Hargrove. I got to see Stanley Clark play,

Scott Cowan [00:14:03]:

in a really Oh.

Tom Stocks [00:14:05]:

Bare bones kinda thing that was Stanley Clark unplugged. It was just mind blowing. But my favorite always was a modjemal. And, just watching a modjamaal play was was always the best.

Scott Cowan [00:14:21]:

Wasn’t that a nice benefit? A nice benefit of working there? Okay. That’s cool.

Tom Stocks [00:14:25]:

Oh, yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:14:27]:

So what’s what’s so Taylor’s been around since before, you know, over a hundred plus years, almost over almost a hundred

Tom Stocks [00:14:34]:

and thirty years. Right? It’s long, long running company. Eighteen eighteen ninety. So a hundred So things have changed. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Family owned and operated from the beginning, although to say family owned and operated is a little bit of a misnomer in the sense that, you know, oystering back in the eighteen hundreds wasn’t exactly a a, you know, it wasn’t like an LLC.

Tom Stocks [00:15:06]:

It was some guys growing oysters on the Puget Sound and then taking them over. So the modern company really began a couple generations ago with Taylor United. But the two original brothers had come from Arizona where they had been working for Wyatt Earp and decided that they were tired of chasing cattle around. So they came up to Washington state and, got themselves some Timberland and some Thailand. And that was right after

Scott Cowan [00:15:41]:

Okay.

Tom Stocks [00:15:41]:

Washington became a state, you know, right after we became a state up here. And it was right after they passed, the Bush Callow Act, which, is super unique to Washington State in that if you, let’s say, live on a beach, you have waterfront property, down to Mean Tide. And then below that is another property with another deed that extends all the way to the lowest tide of the year. So, I mean, what that means is that people could you know, we own or lease all 13,000 acres of our tide land. Other states, it’s a it’s a permit that you, for you to go grab oysters off the beach and that’s managed as such or, you know, it’s like a very extended lease. But, I mean, we have beaches that we’ve owned for a hundred and thirty one years. And Wow. I mean, one that allows, you know, companies and families to invest and to think of it as a continued asset.

Tom Stocks [00:16:53]:

And then also, you you know that if you own it, then the, the environmental stewardship, the buck can only land one place, right, back with you. So Mhmm. It’s a very unique I think maybe there might be a few situations like this in Alaska as well, but as far as, like, the entire East Coast, Oystering, Washington is unique. And I think the only other privately owned tide lands in the the Lower 48, are in the Chesapeake Bay Area, and King George the third signed those deeds. Wow. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:17:36]:

So so there’s some there’s some serious history going on here.

Tom Stocks [00:17:40]:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Serious history. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Cowan [00:17:46]:

Just out of curiosity, you know Yeah. Is it is it easier to to own the land the the tide land or lease it than it is to get a permit to harvest from it? I mean, does it and we I don’t wanna go too deep here, but is it is it easier to operate Washington than say, you know, another state that doesn’t have it this way in your opinion?

Tom Stocks [00:18:13]:

Well, I mean, oysters are a very large industry in Washington state that has been supported since, day one by the local government, because there are so many great places to grow oysters in Washington. If you, you know, you look at a map, you’re not going to find very many protected waterways sandwiched between two mountain ranges, with gently sloping beaches and extreme variations in tides, around the world, especially in a latitude that will benefit a really diverse crop of algae for them to feed on. So, the area itself is made for growing oysters and then, you know, the local governments recognize that. And I’m sitting here in Olympia, Washington right now. I can see the state capital out of my window. The reason the capital is in Olympia and not, I think, maybe Walla Walla or Spokane, a few other places were up for nomination back in the day was because, Olympia was where the timber and the oysters came together, the two primary industries that we had when Washington was becoming a state. So oysters in Washington state are intertwined from the beginning. If you wanna talk about nuts and bolts oyster farming and if it’s easier if you own the land, we were talking about the hatchery.

Tom Stocks [00:19:46]:

You know, we don’t look out on the beach and look for wild set oysters and harvest them. So we don’t extract anything from the environment. Whether or not we could do this without owning the land, I I haven’t really thought about that too much. But what we do is we grow all of our or all of our oysters, clams, mussels, whatever. They are born in our hatchery from our broodstock that we like, and then they are raised through a series of nurseries. Yeah. Kona gets a lot of attention, but there’s there’s other ones that are, much more significant. And then we plant them on the beach, and then we grow them.

Tom Stocks [00:20:29]:

So we’ve we plant them on our beach, and then we care for them the entire time. We move them around, you know, they start farther up, closer to the houses, you know, kind of the head of the bay as we call it, away from the predators and then we slowly transport them down to the lower beds where there’s better feeding and when the animal’s more robust it it will be less, you know, threatened by predators. So if you could do all that with a lease, I don’t know, but I do know that this whole process and industry was certainly fueled by property rights and the ability of people, the Taylor family and others to know that they’re go if they own this tideland, they’re going to work it and expect it to produce and care for it for as long as they own it. So it’s kind of a chicken and egg thing. Right? Is is oysterings Right. Really popular in Washington state because we have this special property rights or was oystering so so geared towards Washington state that it made sense for us to, develop these property rights? They just kind of work hand in hand together at this point in time.

Scott Cowan [00:21:50]:

I had I mean, I know very I mean, I like oysters. I eat oysters, but I had no idea that they were like moved around or anything. So this is fascinating to me.

Tom Stocks [00:22:02]:

When Well, let me just tell you what. So back in the day, in Willapa Bay when they were growing Olympias and then sending them down to San Francisco for the gold rush, what they would do is there’s certain parts of Willapa Bay where, the oysters would set really well.

Scott Cowan [00:22:19]:

Mhmm.

Tom Stocks [00:22:20]:

And then what the original oystermen would do was find these immature oysters and then they would move them to deeper water and then the oysters would fatten up faster. And so the the original oyster game before we started having a hatchery was a lot more like ranching. You know, you you have your oysters in their their winter bed, and then they go to their summer bed to fatten. And then, you know, you might move some to a certain bed to capture more seed during the spawning season. So it’s been pretty much part of the process for a long time, because then you just get the oysters to market faster and you get a more well rounded animal taking advantage of the right conditions for each stage of their life.

Scott Cowan [00:23:16]:

Okay. I know you could go on.

Tom Stocks [00:23:17]:

There’s a lot.

Scott Cowan [00:23:18]:

Yeah, I know.

Tom Stocks [00:23:19]:

Oh, there’s a lot.

Scott Cowan [00:23:20]:

Yeah. But let’s shift gears and let’s talk about shellfish’s tasty fun things to eat. And Let’s do it. First off first off, I’m I have I don’t think I’ve ever successfully shucked an oyster. There’s gotta be a trick.

Tom Stocks [00:23:43]:

I mean, I teach my staff how to do them in their hands, no towel, maybe some latex gloves, just for food safety. And after they get a few days under their belt, then I make them do it blindfolded, and then they all do it fine. And so everybody can shock with their eyes closed. And that’s just because opening oysters is I mean, you could have two strategies. You could have the sharpest knife and the burliest person, and you could just, like, muscle them open and slice them up. We do things much different than that at Taylor Shellfish. The shucking program is, something I’ve spent the most time on, had the opportunity to meet pretty much all the greatest shuckers in the world and stand shoulder to shoulder with them. We open we we try to I mean, what I want everyone to know that, whether you’re a hundred pounds soaking wet or 300 pounds, you’re strong enough to open oysters because it is not a feat of strength.

Tom Stocks [00:24:57]:

It is a delicate process where, you know, the thing I always say is we put our mind at the tip of our knife. And each oyster has a built in plan for you to open it as gently as possible. And it turns out that opening it very gently is also one of the fastest ways to open it. So an oyster, if it’s laying on its, on, you know, laying on the bottom shell with the top shell looking up at you is essentially a clock. And the where the two shells come together, that’s called the hinge, and we just call that six o’clock. And then the bill, which would be usually the side everyone slurps them out of, that’s twelve. And so what we do is we take our knife and we casually wedge it into that hinge, and then we use a little torque, pop the shell, and then we just run our knife up to three o’clock where the muscle is, and we scrape it off the shell. And then it’s done.

Tom Stocks [00:26:01]:

And, you know, we can make it look pretty fancy with a lot of flipping and this and that as far as, like, you know, I’ll open oysters and the and the top shell will kinda come flying off hurtling in the air, and then I’ll just have this perfect oyster right there for you. But it really are knives. You couldn’t cut a lemon with our knife. I want it’s a knife that I designed. I want it as dull as possible. If you poked yourself with it, it wouldn’t break the skin. I don’t want the tip very, pointy at all. I want basically just kind of a a flexible triangle, and I’m gonna use my understanding of the the anatomy of the oyster to dislodge it at its weak points.

Tom Stocks [00:26:46]:

So we don’t cut anything. If you’ve cut the oyster, you’ve actually failed. So what we try to do is dislodge the hinge at its weakest point, and then we try to scrape the oyster off the shell. And, you know, when you kinda get with someone who knows what they’re doing and you see how, I don’t wanna say low effort, but it’s not intense by any stretch. It’s very you can do it very casually when you get good, and it’s just kind of a it’s a much more peaceful process than what a lot of people would think. We, quite frankly, don’t have l and I claims from shucking oysters. We don’t get knives stuck in our hands. I mean, my right index finger has quite a few calluses on it because I’m so intimate, you know, opening the oyster that the the bill, the shell will kinda scrape me a little bit.

Tom Stocks [00:27:49]:

But as far as putting a knife in my hand, never Never put a knife in my hand. We definitely have more l and I claims from our meat slicer, than we do opening oysters. And we’re, you know, we’re in the tens of millions of oysters opened at our restaurants. So it it I mean, oysters, it looks like a rock, you know. If you’re not

Scott Cowan [00:28:12]:

if you

Tom Stocks [00:28:13]:

don’t know what you’re looking for, it looks like a puzzle. But once you get get an idea of it and you realize that every oyster has the same kind of anatomy as far as the two shells come together here, the muscles here, the this is that, you know, it all lines up, then you just kind of relax for lack of a better term and just open them, you know? And we I’ve taught a lot of people how to shuck oysters, all shapes and sizes. And, you know, that’s something I really worked on from the very beginning is that, you know, opening oysters isn’t like a buff dude thing. I think that

Scott Cowan [00:29:00]:

it it it

Tom Stocks [00:29:00]:

it gets it gets that kind of reputation around the world, But anyone can open oysters, and we’ve had all different kinds of people with all shapes and sizes who have been exceptional oyster openers.

Scott Cowan [00:29:18]:

Alright. Yeah. So let’s let’s let’s we we we’ll come back probably. I got a couple of questions, but let’s let’s move on to, like, other shelf. So when I think of Taylor, you know, I think of oysters. That’s kind of primarily what I think of. But you guys do clams, mussels, other

Tom Stocks [00:29:37]:

And gooey duck and gooey duck.

Scott Cowan [00:29:39]:

And gooey you guys you guys raise gooey duck.

Tom Stocks [00:29:41]:

Yeah. So, I mean, gooey duck is a clam, but to us, it’s a whole separate category. You know? When we say clams, we’re talking about Manila clams, which are, you know, they’re not they’re not native, but they’re essentially native at this point in time. They came over stuck on ships hundreds of years ago and just kinda Mhmm. Acclimated themselves really well here. So vanilla clams are meant to be cooked. They’re steamer clam, and we, you know, harvest a lot of those every single day and send them to just about every market that we we service. They’re kind of like the heartbeat, you know, in that they’re very consistent, and they don’t have a dramatic season where the quality drops off and they’re kinda readily accessible through a wide variety of tides.

Tom Stocks [00:30:35]:

So Manila clams is like super consistent for us. And then mussels have a little more of a variability, but we’re coming into, peak mussel time. And then geoduck is, you know, geoduck’s pretty consistent too because you can either, dig a geoduck during a low tide or you can go out, scuba diving and get geoduck as well. And I think we produce the most farm raised geoduck of anybody in the world. The Pacific Northwest is the place for geoduck naturally occurring. You know, there’s no other place like it. I remember reading this statistic years ago, and who knows how accurate it is, but it was it was, you know, like, the biomass of geoduck in the Puget Sound area was greater than any other animal that lived naturally in that region. So if you, like, had a pile, all the geoduck would be the biggest pile compared to all the other animals because by the time you get out into the depths of the Puget Sound, they’re they’re just like underwater trees.

Tom Stocks [00:31:47]:

There’s forests of them everywhere. And that again is a testament to the to just kind of the really unique environment that we have here. There’s not really geoducks anywhere.

Scott Cowan [00:31:57]:

So how

Tom Stocks [00:31:57]:

long Not not the way we

Scott Cowan [00:31:58]:

So how long does it take to grow a geoduck to how long is it how long is a geoduck’s cycle?

Tom Stocks [00:32:05]:

Well, I mean, a geoduck would probably, at the youngest, be about seven years old.

Scott Cowan [00:32:11]:

Oh.

Tom Stocks [00:32:12]:

Yeah. And if you left a geoduck to its own devices, it would live for over a century. And geoducks and Galapagos tortoises are the only animals that can remain sexually active for over a century because they can they can just sit there and thrive once they get set in their beach, and they will just live and grow and reproduce and eat for forever. I mean, we had a geoduck came in this fall. It was 10 pounds.

Scott Cowan [00:32:48]:

What?

Tom Stocks [00:32:50]:

It was 10 pounds. Yeah. That’s the biggest I’ve ever seen. And you can kind of, pseudoscience, count the rings on the shell like you’re counting the rings on a tree. And it was Right. Thirty, forty years old minimum.

Scott Cowan [00:33:05]:

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Stocks [00:33:09]:

Wow. So we send that geoduck all over America and and it it gets a lot of attention that we send it to Asia. But I mean, everyone loves it. You know? We send a ton of we don’t call over America, and everyone’s just eating it raw. It’s a super popular sashimi product these days. And it’s really it’s just it’s worth its own podcast for sure. Maybe a visual one.

Scott Cowan [00:33:38]:

Maybe a visual. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

Tom Stocks [00:33:43]:

Because it looks I

Scott Cowan [00:33:44]:

think your LinkedIn photo has you holding up two of them. Like, you’re you’re, like, in a kitchen.

Tom Stocks [00:33:50]:

Yeah. That’s a Taylor Shellfish Moe roast market as many years and pants sizes ago.

Scott Cowan [00:33:58]:

Yeah. Well, hey. Can we

Tom Stocks [00:34:00]:

Yeah. But, yeah, that’s two those two geoducks each were probably about seven years old in my hand.

Scott Cowan [00:34:08]:

Those were seven year old geoduck.

Tom Stocks [00:34:10]:

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And those are So earlier you said you guys are number ones. Those are number one gooey ducks, so they’re like 1.5 pounds each.

Scott Cowan [00:34:20]:

Okay. Is that so is that how they’re kinda graded is by their weight?

Tom Stocks [00:34:24]:

By their weight and then, by the clarity or whiteness of their meat. For certain customers, they like, like, a very kind of, pearly white meat. The meat that’s in between the shell, kind of the breast meat, they like that to be very light in color, and that’s basically means that the geoduck grew in a more sandy environment as opposed to maybe a rockier or siltier environment because it’s just, the slow staining of the skin due to all of the stuff floating in the water. So when they grow in these, you know, the West Side Of Key Peninsula and a lot of the Case Inlet there has all this glacial runoff from Mount Rainier, and there’s all these actually pretty fine sand beaches, especially when you get to a lower tide level. And the geoduck just thrive in that soft clean sand, then they grow those really pearly white breast meat. To be a number one, you have to be a certain size and you have to have that coloration. And then as you get smaller and or darker, then there’s different grades. And if you look at a piece of sashimi, you’ll understand why that pearly white meat really kind of appeals, to diners because it it it has a different kind of reflective hue off the plate as opposed to one that might have, more of a stain.

Tom Stocks [00:36:03]:

Kinda makes it look like it has a peel to it. So that’s why we grate them like that.

Scott Cowan [00:36:10]:

So you opened restaurants for them. Mhmm. What’s your tell us a couple of ways to besides sashimi, what’s another way for let’s talk about how we consume your products. Like steamer clams, got that bucket of clams. We’ve all done that. Mhmm. Oysters on the on the half shell, we’ve all done that. Geoduck, I don’t know that I’ve ever I must have had Geoduck at some point.

Scott Cowan [00:36:35]:

I’m you know? But certainly not I’m not can’t articulate, oh, yeah. I had Geoduck, you know, here. But what’s some great ways to use these products? And then, like, mussels, like, let’s let’s go there. How do you think we should prepare mussels?

Tom Stocks [00:36:55]:

So, I mean, I will say that our restaurants are a temple to raw food, straight up.

Scott Cowan [00:37:00]:

Okay.

Tom Stocks [00:37:01]:

You know, we, you know, before we get to mussels, so like oysters, we promote this idea that, you know, an oyster from a certain place with a certain characteristic is its own, food experience. And then the joy of eating oysters in volume is comparing all of these different, oysters together and learning kind of their story and then all the different flavors. So we you know, the majority of our oysters sold are in a what we call a Shucker’s Dozen, and that’s usually four to six varieties, two or more apiece. And then the idea is that the diner, you know, gets a gets a tour of the Puget Sound just by eating that plate. So, you know, when it comes to raw oysters, that’s about half of what we do. And so that’s why we have these excellent shuckers because we are opening a lot of oysters. And then we have, you know, steamers of mussels and clams, that we we sell a lot of. And then, you know, we have some regular dishes that people can enjoy.

Tom Stocks [00:38:11]:

And then we have, I’ll humbly say the best Dungeness crab program in North America, and that’s very specific how we serve our Dungeness crab as well. But mussels, you know, Manila clams, you’re basically gonna steam Manila clams, and that’s why they’re great because they just have this one great application and then you go from there. The mussels that we grow are originally from the Mediterranean. That’s the Galloprovisialis species, and they, they don’t get enough credit for how versatile they are. So, yeah, you can steam them open, and they’re delightful. Last week, we had a giant outdoor bonfire kitchen, and we were actually testing kind of the limits of cooking mussels over open coals in a variety of different ways. So we smoked a bunch in a cast iron, Dutch oven with fresh herbs and seaweed. We, I can shuck them.

Tom Stocks [00:39:20]:

So you shuck them on the half shell and then grill them kinda like oysters over coals. Mhmm. Top with your favorite thing. I I learned about this phenomenon they have in Istanbul, Turkey, which has just the most robust muscle culture I’ve ever seen via Internet. And it looks like whenever anyone gets out of a club at the end of the night, they go stand in packs of 30 or 40 at muscle stands. And that’s the street food they eat late at night. Yeah. And so they’ll fry them and make kinda po’boy esque sandwiches with, like, this garlicky walnut sauce, and that seems very popular, like fried mussel po’boy.

Tom Stocks [00:40:04]:

But what they really do is they pop them open with, like, a little pen knife when they’re raw, and they fill them with this, beautiful kinda rice pilaf. And then they put them back together and pile them up and steam them, and the mussels come out and it’s it’s uncanny. The the two sides of the mussel meat are wrapped around this nugget of beautiful rice pilaf. And then everyone goes after they leave the club, and they just go eat, like, twenty, thirty stuffed mussels. And they’re, like, playing music, and they’re hanging out till the end of the night, just, like, really vibrant culture. So we, we did that. You know? We put on some jams, and we stuffed a bunch of mussels and then steamed them. And to a person, we were just shocked at how awesome and delicious it is.

Tom Stocks [00:41:03]:

So, we’re working on getting that idea out to more people so they can kinda see it with their own eyes. But if you take frying and and then we, like, grill them on skewers. So, you know, we took this product that to pretty much everybody would be, yeah, you steam it open with some garlic and white wine and move on. And we were stuffing it with rice. We were grilling it with jerk seasoning. We’re smoking it with, rosemary and seaweed. We were steaming it a bunch of different ways and, and then grilling it on the half shell. And it it was as versatile as you would consider oysters, and delightful.

Tom Stocks [00:41:50]:

So that’s kinda like what’s on my mind right now,

Scott Cowan [00:41:53]:

is the world of mussels. So I just that sounds like a you you had just a that was a horrible day at work. I mean, to have to sample all the the harvest and and and try new things, that’s that actually sounds amazing, actually. And I had no clue, Istanbul.

Tom Stocks [00:42:14]:

Yeah. I know. I can’t I can’t wait to eventually get over there and see with my own eyes. I mean, I I think I might have a job that, a lot of people are pretty envious of. And that was the whole point of me trying to get it was that, you know, we’re gonna work really hard, You know, certainly running four restaurants at once and consulting on a few more was exhausting, but I’ve had plenty of days where my friends look at me and go, I can’t believe you call this work. Whether it’s, you know, having parties on the beach, going to Shanghai and throwing oyster cookouts or, you know, I mean, I’m the company sommelier as well. So, you know, six hour wine tastings, and I I think I got a good mix of doing the difficult stuff. And, you know, like we always say, you gotta live the culture you wanna create.

Tom Stocks [00:43:12]:

So we want people to think that eating shellfish and drinking fine wine is just the cool thing you do when you live in the Puget Sound. And if I wasn’t doing that every chance I got, then I don’t know what I’d be what I’d be standing for.

Scott Cowan [00:43:26]:

So let’s let’s let’s shift gears and talk wine for a second. What wines go well with with I mean, what are you pairing? What’s what’s interesting to you these days?

Tom Stocks [00:43:38]:

Well, for all of our Seattle locations, we’ve never poured a glass of red wine.

Scott Cowan [00:43:45]:

Okay.

Tom Stocks [00:43:45]:

So we have only served white rose still and sparkling for ten years. And that’s kind of a chemical, decision in that what gives red wine its pigment, pigment is forgive me for butchering this word, but I think they’re called anthocyanins, and those are particulates in the wine that have leached off the skin of red grapes and that gives it its color. It also reacts very poorly with the iodine in the oysters. So Okay. It it was very controversial for me originally to refuse to serve red wine in our restaurants. And man, the discussions that I had with customers who couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t do that. And it boiled down once to this great discussion I had with this, lady who was in, and she and I gave her all the reasons why we didn’t serve red wine. And she said, you know, you’re just making this about you.

Tom Stocks [00:44:52]:

It’s not about you. And I said, well, it’s not about you either. It’s about the oysters. Would you like a glass of Prosecco? And she sat down, and she loved it. And and and I don’t know where this kind of came from, but there is a very kind of interesting subculture where, in America, I drink red wine with everything, whether it’s, you know, tacos or ice cream. And it’s my choice, and that’s just my cocktail of choice. So for certain people, it’s really hard to get them to understand or to latch on to this idea that you would just always have certain types of wine with certain foods. And, yeah, red wine is great.

Tom Stocks [00:45:44]:

It’s wonderful. But when you’re having oysters, you should have white wine. And so then the white wines that I, really focus on, I’m a huge fan of France and Willamette Valley in Oregon. So, what you have in France, you know, depending on your understanding of why giving France its due seems cliche. But then when you kinda get into it, you begin to understand a little more. For me, in France, they grow wines that have a strong acid backbone, and they have nice texture. So when I’m pairing wines with oysters, more so than flavors, what I’m thinking about is how the tartness of the wine will interplay with the saltiness of the oyster to bring those two sensations, kind of to evil even playing ground. And then I’m thinking about the texture of the wine, as far as, its mouthfeel and how that’s gonna react to the liquor, in the oyster.

Tom Stocks [00:46:56]:

So we love Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Gris and Grigio, Gruner Veltliner, all these, you know, wines with a great acidic component. I used to think that I needed to find wines. I mean, I became a somm during my tenure at Taylor Shellfish, so I I learned a lot of this on, you know, on the ground, through the moment. So when I first I first thought I need to find wines that traditionally grow near the beach, and I had varying degrees of success doing that. But then as I got a little more educated and experienced and confident, then what I realized is I actually wanted to find wines that grew in soil that was prehistoric oceans. So if you take Burgundy and Champagne, for instance, in France, you can walk through the vineyards and you can find a piece of marl, which is a clay limestone composite from the Jurassic period, and it has prehistoric oyster shells laden in it. And those kinds of stones are the primary component of, all those vineyards in Burgundy and Champagne. And so you have kind of this natural story there where the wine grows in prehistoric oyster beds.

Tom Stocks [00:48:35]:

The presence of limestone gives the wine, a strong mineral characteristic and, great slow developing acidity. And then if you look hard enough in Oregon, you find, you find similar examples of that. They’re not 240,000,000 year old soils, but they are, 30 to 40,000,000 year old soils. And so I just tried to find vineyards that promoted the wines that I wanted. So strong acidity, nice minerality, good texture, and then usually from slightly cooler climates so that they weren’t cloyingly sweet or overly, alcoholic. Just a lot of balance. And the idea is that the wine is gonna have the acidic component similar to a squeeze of lemon. And so what we say is that the best condiment for a perfectly sharp oyster is a fine glass of wine.

Tom Stocks [00:49:39]:

Alright. Yeah. So that’s what we do with, with wine. And then we’ve been making some wines with some, excellent producers in Willamette Valley the last couple of years and really kinda honing that in. And then hopefully one day we make some champagne with some people over in Champagne and just kinda keep building on that program. And, you know, the the battles that for the first couple years I fought, about red wine melted into none. And then as we got some tenure, then it became something that people bragged about where they were like, oh god. You gotta go to this place.

Tom Stocks [00:50:22]:

They don’t they don’t even serve red wine because it’s all about the oysters and it’s all about the oysters and that seemed to almost vet us a little bit, with the guests. And it became went from something that I had to talk about every day to something that never came up again.

Scott Cowan [00:50:42]:

That’s what it is to me.

Tom Stocks [00:50:44]:

That’s awesome.

Scott Cowan [00:50:45]:

Yeah. Wow. What else? Let’s let’s we we wanted to talk about muscles a little bit. What what else haven’t we have we covered everything with muscles?

Tom Stocks [00:50:58]:

Well, I mean, our mussel, so Gallo Provincialis from the province of Gaul, these are the mussels that the Romans have been or the Romans were raising two thousand years ago, and we essentially grow in the same way. If you went to Taranto or something down in the boot of Italy, they’re doing the same thing. They’re just growing them on rafts braided into rope, and the muscles kind of grow out of the rope. And then all of a sudden, you pull up just this hulking rope full of muscles, and then clean them off, and then you eat them. So it’s very you know, it’s an old school type of food and, we grow the muscles here in the Totten Inlet where they they have great flow and a ton of nutrients, so they are extremely fat. And this, you know, we had kind of a tough muscle season last year with COVID. There wasn’t a lot of demand. You know, we don’t have to get into too many COVID things, but needless to say, we have a bumper crop.

Tom Stocks [00:52:08]:

Yeah. We have a bumper crop of mussels this year and their seasonality is hitting right now all the way through Christmas. And so for me having, you know, focused primarily on oysters for the longest time, This is an opportunity for me to kinda dive into a product that doesn’t have center stage at our company, but is equally world class, in its own right. So we, you know, we just have been playing with them a lot, and the versatility is is huge. So we’re working on some ideas to get people to think muscles are cool like our friends, the Turks. And, I I think that it’s gonna work, but they’re inexpensive. They’re a superfood. You know, all these kind of things besides how they taste that make them, you know, extremely popular and a good a good opportunity for people.

Tom Stocks [00:53:10]:

And so I I think that for me, you know, having done this for ten years, I’m still kind of finding products and learning a little more about them. I mean, I’ve, you know, happily acted like an expert whenever given the opportunity to kind of set that mood, but I still find things about our company every day that I had no idea about. And getting to kinda dive into these mussels has been my most recent revelation for sure. Anytime you can cook something over a grill, you know?

Scott Cowan [00:53:46]:

So what is right now? Some legs. How are you enjoying mussels?

Tom Stocks [00:53:52]:

Well, I, another something we didn’t do last week, but I’ve been eating them like this for a while. I’ll steam them. Haven’t we covered? And then I’ll put them in oh, well, steep well, I’m gonna I see

Scott Cowan [00:54:06]:

the thing about mussels is once you steam them, then you can do a lot

Tom Stocks [00:54:09]:

of things to them because they can handle a second cooking. So you steam them just enough to get them open and then you’d find a bunch of other ways you can deal with them. Personally, what I love is to marinate them in fancy olive oil with, a little bit of paprika and bay leaf and then let them sit in my fridge for like a week. And then you have marinated mussels that have kind of locked in all this flavor, and then I’ll eat them on, like, you know, open face toast with a little aioli and a little vegetable, and that is to die for. That’s how the Spanish eat them. They can them, marinate them in oil, and then they pop them open after they’ve aged for a little bit, and then they eat them with toast and in in bars with toothpicks, and they drink, you know, beer, and it’s it’s it’s a whole scene. So I love to have a jar of marinated mussels in my fridge ready for whenever I that’s like an everyday food. You know? That’s like having canned tuna.

Tom Stocks [00:55:15]:

It’s it’s good. I just just love it. It’s a process that to people sound so alien and so much work. I, like, I couldn’t do any less effort to get these things made. It’s very simple. And then when you have them, you have them. So that’s kinda what we’re working on. We’re trying to show people how easy some of these recipes are, and then we’re gonna try and show them some super complicated ones to inspire them because that’s kinda the part that’s kind of the nature of food these days is you wanna both make it super accessible and then you wanna make it very aspirational as well for certain people because, I mean, the amount of people who are challenging themselves in their kitchen is I don’t think there’s ever been more people than now who are doing that.

Tom Stocks [00:56:03]:

So, it seemed to get some pretty good responses by doing some wild stuff that people didn’t expect and then they wanna go try it. So, a little bit of both.

Scott Cowan [00:56:14]:

Well, what’s an example of a aspirational recipe? What what what do you mean by that? Give me an example of something complex and difficult, but worth it.

Tom Stocks [00:56:23]:

Well, I think that if you learn how to half shuck mussels and then you stuff them with rice and then you tie them back together with strings and then resteam them, that’s a pretty aspirational recipe. Yeah. You know, like, smoking them over fire, is it’s it’s more than just something you would do on a Tuesday. Right? So anytime that you can turn a a recipe into an event, I think that’s kind of an aspirational recipe where, you know, I mean, I’ve I’ve turned some recipes into events. I’ve cooked a whole pig before and invited all my friends, and then I had to live with the fact that I didn’t do a very good job. But the the fact that I was cooking it was an event in its own right. You know? And anytime you can do that with some food, whether it’s grilling and shocking a ton of oysters or, you know, slicing a bunch of geoduck for your friends or stuffing mussels or what have you, that a recipe that can be a party, I think, is kind of an aspirational, an aspirational recipe, you know? Something that seems a little challenging and a little daunting, but then if it’s all there in front of you and your friends and family, it’s gonna be something that they tell everyone about, you know? So a little bit of both.

Scott Cowan [00:57:51]:

Okay. Mhmm. So so when you’re not doing shellfish, what do you like to do? You you you know, before we hit record, you’re you’re newer to the Olympia area. You mentioned you’re going to the Olympia Farmers Market a couple times a week, but

Todd Phillips [00:58:07]:

what do you like to

Scott Cowan [00:58:08]:

do for fun and excitement when you’re not selling shellfish and and helping people, you know, their house shuck?

Tom Stocks [00:58:18]:

I like to fish when I can, but I think like everybody, I don’t fish nearly as much as I want or I I don’t fish I don’t fish nearly as much as you think I might, you know. Okay. And then I just kinda take it easy. I work a lot and I’m always on my phone talking to people from, you know, five different continents. So I spend time with my friends and family, and I read books, and I, walk around Olympia. I go to Seattle a lot, and I, usually, am cooking something pretty good to kind of keep growing myself, and I don’t know. I’m just pretty obsessed with the whole thing. You know? I eat oysters on my day off for sure.

Tom Stocks [00:59:05]:

You know? Okay.

Scott Cowan [00:59:07]:

Yeah. Alright.

Tom Stocks [00:59:08]:

So I just kinda live this Northwest life and, try to spend time with my friends and family and read a book or two and, be outside. And then if I’m lucky, every now and then I go catch a fish. And, I know it’s kinda funny to ask people what they do. I feel like for a year and a half, I I haven’t really been able to do much. So I I have to, like, think about what I used to do back in the day. I forgot. I go to a lot of baseball games. I do.

Tom Stocks [00:59:40]:

I I’ll go to a base

Scott Cowan [00:59:41]:

baseball? I’ll go

Tom Stocks [00:59:42]:

to a baseball game by my I mean, with friends, obviously, but then I will be more than happy, to go to a baseball game by myself and keep score. And, Oh, wow. Okay. I still keep score, and I like, you know, like to think that, my scorecard looks pretty good, you know, because people who keep score, it’s kind of their own little it’s it’s not art, but it’s it’s it’s very organized craft, you know, and the way I I do all that. Yeah. I love to keep scoring. I can’t keep score with someone there. It’s too much.

Tom Stocks [01:00:19]:

So if I want to, I usually will catch a game, by myself. And, you know So do

Scott Cowan [01:00:26]:

you go do you go to to the to the Rainiers or do you go to the Mariners? Or

Tom Stocks [01:00:30]:

Well, for when I lived in Seattle for about five years, my office was across the street from, what was in Safeco Field. So I would finish my work. It’d be about $6.45. I would go scalp a ticket, which is part of my favorite thing to do in its own right. And then I would go just kinda I’m a I’m a born street negotiator. I got no problem negotiating on the street.

Scott Cowan [01:00:58]:

So

Tom Stocks [01:00:58]:

I just go grab a ticket, and I go sit down somewhere close to home plate, and I would, keep score. Usually, try to pick games based on who was pitching. And that’s that’s, like, you know, that’s one of my favorite things to do. But mainly, I’m just trying to get in front of my friends and hang out, shoot the breeze. You know, we can all sit around and talk for hours.

Scott Cowan [01:01:22]:

So here’s a question for you. Baseball question. Hear me. K. What’s the most memorable baseball game or, you know, specific part of a game that you’ve ever seen? Have you ever seen do have you have you have you been to a no hitter?

Tom Stocks [01:01:39]:

No. You know, that’s that’s part of the reason why I keep score. I’ve never been into a no hitter. So lots of times, I’ll keep score until someone gets a hit, and then I’ll just be like, oh, whatever. You know? Obviously, I’m 37 years old. There’s nothing more important to me when it comes to baseball than Edgar Martinez’s double in 1995. But I was watching that game with my dad in our living room, and we were jumping up and down and crying. In person, I have I got to see, I watched Ken Griffey junior come back after his tenure with the Reds and White Sox and hit his four hundredth home run as a Mariner.

Tom Stocks [01:02:24]:

And while that wasn’t a season that was very great for the Mariners, there was something about watching Griffey come back and hit that home run that it felt like closure. You know? Very, very cathartic. And then Itro hit a grand slam right after that, and, they blew him out. And I had a good mix of people I was at the game with, and so that was pretty magical night. But nothing in the world will compare to the double in 1995. That was, you know, there’s a reason they show it every broadcast of a Mariners game. It’s hands down our greatest moment, as a franchise. And I just remember being 12 years old, and I just couldn’t have been more, impressed and overjoyed in that moment.

Tom Stocks [01:03:14]:

So that’s my, obviously, my best baseball moment for sure.

Scott Cowan [01:03:19]:

Alright. I’m gonna ask you a question. I’ve I’ve never asked anybody this question before because it just kinda came to me. I think this will be fun. If you could invite one, I’ll say Mariner, to go have dinner with you at a Taylor’s shellfish restaurant, who would it be and why?

Tom Stocks [01:03:40]:

So, like, I have hosted Omar Biscale before. He came in with his daughter, and I was like, oh my god. That’s Omar Vizquel. Like, if I met a pres if I met a president, I I wouldn’t be nervous. But when I see Mariners from, like, when I was nine to 14 years old, I I I couldn’t barely get a sentence out. So sitting and opening a two dozen Kumamoto’s for Omar and his daughter was pretty great. But I would have to sit with Edgar and talk about hitting, and he would just be so, like, chill and quiet and peaceful. We would just have this wonderful long conversation, and we would talk about hitting for hours and just eat oysters.

Tom Stocks [01:04:26]:

And I would I would sit down with Edgar. If I tried to go hang out with Griffey, I’d be too nervous. I would be, like, I wouldn’t be able to get a sentence out. So Edgar’s a little more approachable.

Scott Cowan [01:04:45]:

I I wow. Okay. To I would pick Edgar too. Yeah. And I actually I don’t know. I think I’ve shared this story on the an episode before. I’ll share this story with you because it’s it’s because you’re you’re kinda geeking out over Edgar. So back in the back in the day, I had a a real, you know, a real job.

Scott Cowan [01:05:05]:

And then at night, for fun, I worked at Egghead Software. Mhmm. Just you know, how some people used to go to the bar and throw darts and have beers with their friends. I went to a software store and sold software for fun. And there was this game called Hardball four, which was a baseball simulator. And when the store wasn’t busy, we would all get around and play home run derby. And I would always pick Edgar. And if somebody would pick Jay Blowers or or or, Mike Blowers, not Jay Blowers, but Jay Bienner, Blowers.

Scott Cowan [01:05:35]:

So one night, we’re we’re playing, and Edgar Martinez walks into the store to buy software for his wife.

Tom Stocks [01:05:43]:

Oh my god.

Scott Cowan [01:05:44]:

And I’m just like I’m like, Joey, that’s Edgar. Put Edgar on you know, because he Edgar wasn’t up on the computer. So we got Edgar’s little character on the computer. Right? And he comes over and he goes, that’s me. That kinda looks like and so he’s playing hardball. He’s doing he’s hitting home runs. Edgar Martinez is controlling himself on the computer hitting home runs. That was great.

Scott Cowan [01:06:07]:

It was it was really weird. And then we got him to autograph the boxes of hardball four. That’s I would love to sit down with Edgar Yeah.

Tom Stocks [01:06:15]:

And have a Hey.

Scott Cowan [01:06:16]:

It’s just so have a cup of coffee.

Tom Stocks [01:06:17]:

Just so chill. Know. Just very chill. And when he talks, it just seems like he’s put a lot of thought into what he’s saying. And, Yeah. That would be great. So that I’d have to say that, you know. Now I’ll think about this question for for twenty years, you know.

Scott Cowan [01:06:37]:

Well, then I asked a good question. Yeah. No. Absolutely. But the thing is is that the thing is is, though, is that I mean, I don’t think there’s a wrong answer. I mean, you could have just painted just the same great picture for Ken Griffey junior or go back before your time when, like, Gaylord Perry pitched for us and he won his three hundred’s game as a runner? Gaylord Perry was the only game he won that year?

Tom Stocks [01:07:01]:

Yeah. He would be fun. Well, I would I’d not to throw some shade though, but if you haven’t made the playoffs in twenty years, there’s probably a few wrong answers to that question.

Scott Cowan [01:07:11]:

Okay. Well, right. I was trying to be nice. Yes. You’re correct.

Tom Stocks [01:07:16]:

But I still believe I’m ever the optimist. Don’t worry about that. But, you know, we could name some names. Alright. It’s a different podcast.

Scott Cowan [01:07:26]:

Yeah. We could. But so let’s let’s wrap this one up. Where can people find out more about about about you guys and and what, you know, what should they be looking for?

Tom Stocks [01:07:37]:

So taylor shellfish, farms.com is our website. I think we’re on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, the works. We have a good little social media team who handles all that. We, you know, we have two of our three restaurants open in Seattle right now. We’re just kinda just like every other restaurant in America, trying to kinda get our teams put back together after this very difficult eighteen months. So Melrose Market, the Capitol Hill location, the original, that is open. Pioneer Square because, you know, the Mariners are cruising right now. We we open that one next, and then we’re looking to bring our Queen Anne 1 back online ASAP.

Tom Stocks [01:08:23]:

Our farm up on Chuckanut Drive in Samish Bay has tables and is open for business. It is cranking every every day, right there on the water with the whole oyster. I mean, you couldn’t have a better tied to table oyster experience than going up to Chuckanut Drive these days. And then, you know, you can find our products in some of the greatest restaurants in America, all, you know, 49 out of 50 states, 48 out of 50. And then, you know, if you find yourself in Asia, not that anyone’s going over there, you go find us in Hong Kong and some of our other places where we have been had great relationships for all these years. So we’re we’re around, man.

Scott Cowan [01:09:11]:

Awesome.

Tom Stocks [01:09:11]:

Yeah. We’re around. Yeah. Well, you but wait. 48 states. What two states aren’t you sending to? Well, I’m We do we legally cannot send oysters to Texas. Really? Yeah. They made up a law.

Scott Cowan [01:09:30]:

Oh, okay.

Tom Stocks [01:09:30]:

I think it’s just I think that it’s, protectionism in the name of, environmental concerns. But if you kinda do their if you take their logic, it doesn’t last very long. And then I was wrong because it’s not ’48, it’s ’49 because we do send to Alaska. I almost forgot.

Scott Cowan [01:09:49]:

So Okay.

Tom Stocks [01:09:50]:

Yeah. So Texas is the only one, man. Texas is the only one. Otherwise, it’s all over the place. Canada, Mexico, And then, you know, for the first time in about fifteen years, the US and the EU are going to agree to trade live bivalves. So one of these days, I’ll be in Paris with all my oysters, showing them off to the Frenchies, and then we will know whether or not they’re gonna kiss the ring.

Scott Cowan [01:10:29]:

Awesome. Yep. Well, on that, I think I think I think we can you could drop the mic, and we’re out. Oh, that’s that’s awesome, man. I I appreciate you, being here and sharing some, you know, kind of just the tip of the iceberg, if you will. I’m sure we I’m sure we could have gone much, much deeper and and all of that, but I think this is great. And thank you for being here. Oh, it

Tom Stocks [01:10:53]:

was my pleasure. Thanks for listening and joining me and letting me get my headphones all figured out, and, hopefully, it sounded good.

Scott Cowan [01:11:01]:

There we go. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks so much. Thank you.

Todd Phillips [01:11:15]:

Join us next time for another episode of the Exploring Washington State podcast.