Away Is Home

I can’t believe I ate that on Alabama’s Gulf Coast

The trouble with eating raw oyster isn’t the taste (it’s delicious) or knowing where it’s been (filtering water on the bottom of the bay) but that it’s alive. “If you open it right, you can still see the heart beating,” says oyster farmer Lane Zirlott, who co-owns the perhaps appropriately named Murder Point Oysters in Bayou La Batre, Ala. Zirlott pries open a fresh oyster, recently scooped out…

I can't believe I ate that on Alabama's Gulf Coast

The trouble with eating raw oyster isn’t the taste (it’s delicious) or knowing where it’s been (filtering water on the bottom of the bay) but that it’s alive.

“If you open it right, you can still see the heart beating,” says oyster farmer Lane Zirlott, who co-owns the perhaps appropriately named Murder Point Oysters in Bayou La Batre, Ala.

Zirlott pries open a fresh oyster, recently scooped out of Portersville Bay, and shows my kids the soft, white flesh, pointing to the veins and other organs of the still-living mollusk.

Then he eats it.

“Ohhhhh,” exclaims my 10-year-old daughter.

On Alabama’s Gulf Coast, you’ll have a lot of “I-can’t-believe-I-ate-that” moments, from Zirlott’s murderously tasty oysters to the farm-to-table restaurants that serve bycatch fish, the alternate seafood that helps stocks stay sustainable.

(OK, I can’t believe I just used the words “farm-to-table” and “sustainable” in the same sentence. Forgive me!)

Murder Point is part of a fledgling movement, just now springing up on this state’s shores, to nurture more environmentally viable food sources. Oysters used to be abundant in the estuaries that flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, but over the decades, development and pollution decimated the colonies.

The answer: oyster farming.

In these shallow waters, they use the longline method — PVC pipes spaced at equal distances on a premeasured length of wire — to raise the oysters. The line is submerged off a dock, anchored on hard bottoms, and hung on a rack. Looks a little like a maze in shallow water.

This is one of several new farms that have sprung up in the last few years. Zirlott, whose family owns a 2 ½-acre farm capable of of growing 1.4 million oysters says the mollusks raised in these waters have a unique taste: sweet, buttery meat with a subtle, briny aftertaste.

I admit, I was reluctant to try a live oyster, but then, I’d do anything for a good story. I grabbed a live mussel and sucked it down. No discernable movement in my mouth. I channeled my inner Andrew Zimmern and swallowed quickly.

Zirlott is right. I’ve had oysters before, but never like this. It’s said that chefs from Charlotte to New Orleans phone him frantically when they run out of Murder Point oysters, begging for more. He can’t keep up with demand, he says.

Oyster farming is more than a novelty for his family. They’re fifth-generation shrimpers and were looking for something new that kept them near the ocean. When his mother, Rosa Zirlott, took an aquaculture class at Auburn University, something clicked. They could be close to the water, doing what they loved, without spending weeks at sea. That’s when they decided to try oyster farming.

But that’s not the only unusual item you’ll eat here. A short drive and a ferry ride away on the more touristy Orange Beach, you’ll find an unusual experience at Voyagers, a fine dining restaurant overlooking the Gulf. The restaurant’s executive chef, Brody Olive, participates in a program called NUISANCE Group, which served “trash” fish.

I know what you’re thinking. No, a “trash” fish isn’t something they plucked out of the dumpster. It’s a fish my daddy used to call “not an eatin’ fish” like bonita, pigfish, pinfish, hog snapper, butterfish or the highly invasive lionfish. Only, it turns out they are eatin’ fish. (Sorry, Dad.)

“The bycatch used to get thrown back into the ocean,” explains Olive. “We keep it.”

Focusing on these lesser-known fish, he notes, allows the more popular stocks like Red Snapper to replenish, which is good for the environment. But also, it lets you take a culinary expedition through the ocean to try something a little more unusual.

I ordered one of the more exotic Strawberry Grouper and braced myself, but I shouldn’t have worried. It was excellent (and definitely not alive) and to make things more interesting, they even showed my kids the exact location of where they caught the fish with an iPad and geotagging software.

Why such detail? Well, the NUISANCE Group wants you to know the fish is local and that your seafood came from the Gulf and helped make the world a better place. When’s the last time your dinner did that for you?

Reality check: This part of Alabama is still known for deep fried seafood and oysters imported from Louisiana or Florida. But like a tide slowly moving up the white sands of Orange Beach, change is coming. The next time you visit this area, you might be surprised by what you eat.

If you go …

Where to stay For a resort experience amid all the vacation rentals, book a room at Perdido Beach Resort, a pink hotel right on the Gulf. Need more room? Check out Turquoise Place, a luxury beachside condominium by Spectrum Resorts, which offers breathtaking ocean views and more creature comforts than your home.

What to do You mean, besides the beach? Try a flying lesson from BeachFlight Aviation, which offers a 20-minute powered hang-gliding experience over Orange Beach.

My daughter is a Grateful Dead fan, so she made me write that headline. We’re on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, the first stop on our grand tour of North America. Looks like fun, but what you don’t see is the almost 9 hours we spent in the car yesterday and all the homework the kids had to get through this morning before they could hit the beach. It’s a beautiful beach, though, and well worth the extra…

Alabama getaway

My daughter is a Grateful Dead fan, so she made me write that headline. We’re on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, the first stop on our grand tour of North America.

Looks like fun, but what you don’t see is the almost 9 hours we spent in the car yesterday and all the homework the kids had to get through this morning before they could hit the beach.

It’s a beautiful beach, though, and well worth the extra effort.

This is the view from our room. Wow.

We’re at the Turquoise Place, a condo development right along the coast. It’s the first vacation rental we’ve stayed in that has its own lazy river, which is where the kids will probably try to spend their entire visit.

But they have to take a break to eat every now and then, and we stumbled upon a great little restaurant called The Gulf that’s built out of shipping containers and serves a really nice burger. Iden likes his well-done with cheese. He had help from his siblings with the fries.

I recommend the freshly made hummus. I know, not what you’d expect from a comfort food place like this, but it’s very good.

So far, the kids have really enjoyed the views from high above the beach. We’ve seen fighter jets from the nearby Pensacola Naval Air Station and are hoping to catch the Blue Angels on a practice run later this week.

The kids go wild in Kenya. Try to keep up.

Want to kiss a giraffe? You’ve probably never asked yourself it you wanted to — let alone if you can can. But you yes, you can, as my kids discovered on a recent visit to Kenya. Head over to the Giraffe Centre just outside Nairobi, more formally known as the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife, a breeding center of the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe. Our whirlwind tour of two Kenyan wildlife…

The kids go wild in Kenya. Try to keep up.

Want to kiss a giraffe?

You’ve probably never asked yourself it you wanted to — let alone if you can can.

But you yes, you can, as my kids discovered on a recent visit to Kenya. Head over to the Giraffe Centre just outside Nairobi, more formally known as the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife, a breeding center of the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe.

Our whirlwind tour of two Kenyan wildlife attractions took place in a single morning, the ideal day trip if you happen to be in Nairobi for a day or two. If nothing else, it’ll allow your family to appreciate the conservancy efforts being made in Africa, or just to get in touch with your wilder side.

What giraffe saliva feels like

Here’s how the Giraffe thing works: You pay the $9.65 admission to the center, and that gets you close — very close — to these rare giraffe. A guide will offer you a pellet. It’s not for you, it’s for the giraffe. Open your hand and one of these gentle creatures will swoop down and gobble up the pellet.

Got that?

My daughter, who can follow basic instructions when she wants to, decided to cooperate. She’s only 10 and fairly short. The Rothschilds must have looked like monsters to her. Good call.

After a few false starts (she dropped the pellet and the annoyed giraffe retreated into the sky) she made contact with tallest terrestrial animal on earth. Specifically, with the animal’s long, gray tongue.

What does giraffe saliva feels like? Glad you asked. In order to find out, I grabbed a pellet and offered it to the nearest animal. It gratefully accepted, leaving a generous amount of warm, think, translucent substance behind. It felt a little sticky.

What does it taste like? Ask this woman. Brave soul.

She did not reveal any details of this intimate moment to the group. Then again, we were so shocked by it, no one could say a word.

But it’s settled: You can kiss a giraffe.

Elephants, mud and a cautionary tale of getting too close

At the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Kenya’s famous elephant orphanage,  you can get close to one of nature’s cutest creations: baby elephants. The trust helps rescue and raise mostly elephant and rhino orphans. Guides parade the babies into a large viewing area, where the orphans receive milk, water and leafy vegetation.

But the question isn’t if can you get close, but do you want to. With signs like this, the kids had second thoughts, understandably.

Just to be clear, the elephants didn’t look dangerous at all. On the contrary, they were adorable. Maybe a little messy, rolling around in all that red mud, but still adorable.

Can we stay on the topic of messy for a moment. Elephants can squirt water over long distances. You probably know where this is going, right? Now scroll to the top of this story and look at my daughter’s shirt. Notice anything? Yep, nailed by a baby elephant. I got splattered, too. Those pachyderms can spit!

But, awwww. How could you stay mad at something like this?

Like the Giraffe Centre, the Sheldrick Trust is doing this for a good cause — in this case, offering hope for the future of Kenya’s threatened elephant and rhino populations against poachers, loss of habitat and human conflict. That’s well worth the $7 contribution to get into the orphanage.

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