Katy - The Oyster Lady
The Oyster Lady · Est. 2007
Katy Davidson, nineteen years in
Katy taught Britain’s first oyster masterclass in 2007, and she has been on her feet ever since, on chef stages and festival stages, in Mayfair dining rooms and on Cornish beaches, at Billingsgate, at Bentley’s, on the radio and live on Channel 4. She has judged the Scottish championships and Ireland’s best dressed oyster. She has taught the people who write about food how to taste one.
Most of that work vanished the moment it finished, the way live work does. This is what is left of it, dated. The oyster revolution has many hands now. It began with hers.
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2007
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Live
Britain’s first oyster masterclass
Katy sets up an oyster barbecue at the Organic Food Festival in Bristol and starts talking to whoever will stop. Barny Haughton of Bordeaux Quay watches her work the crowd and invites her up onto the chef stage. Nobody in Britain is running oyster classes as a business. After this, someone is.
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Live
Terra Madre, Puebla
Chairing Slow Food Cornwall at the time, Katy takes a proposal for a British Youth Food Movement to Mexico.
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Live
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2008
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Live
Youth Food Movement UK launches at Terra Madre, Turin
The Puebla proposal becomes a real organisation.
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Live
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2009
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Broadcast
BBC Radio 4, The Food Programme: “Slow Fish”
Katy gets the Fal Native onto national radio. The programme follows her to Cornwall and then out to Slow Fish in Genoa, where the team she has pulled together (Cornish fishermen, Wright Brothers, her own crew) shuck more than five thousand oysters across a single weekend.
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Broadcast
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2010
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Live
The first Rock Oyster Festival, and its first shucking competition
The festival partly exists because Katy raised the money for it. She consults on the PR, finds the seed sponsorship, and then picks up the microphone and presents the shucking competition herself. She will present it again the following year, and compère it the year after that.
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Live
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2011
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Live
Curator and host, the Great British Oyster Festival
Southampton Boat Show, ten days in September. Katy programmes the whole thing (ten oyster producers, two demonstrations a day) and stands up and introduces every one of them.
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Broadcast
Rude Health: “Kissing the Ocean”
31 March. Rude Health put Katy in front of a camera for their Rant series and let her go. It is the first time the argument she has been making at festivals reaches anyone who isn’t standing in front of her.
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Live
Rock Oyster Festival shucking competition
Presenting, second year running.
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Live
Love Food Festival, Bristol
April. Mangez-Moi oysters, and Katy behind them.
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Milestone
Mangez-Moi Ltd
The original name. It became The Oyster Lady because nobody could pronounce it.
Companies House 07766438
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Live
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2012
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Live
The Great British Oyster Festival, hers outright
Second edition, 14–23 September. Not a guest slot this time. Katy curates and headlines the entire programme.
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Live
Guest compère, Rock Oyster Festival
June. Third year with that festival, third different role.
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Press
BBC Food
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Live
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2013
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Live
Opening the Falmouth Oyster Festival
10 October. Katy gives the presentation and the chef demonstration that open the festival, in the town that made its name on oysters.
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Live
Teaching at Billingsgate Seafood School
22 November. The school’s own course list, archived the year before, ran to fishmongering, frying, knife skills and food safety. No oysters anywhere on it. Katy brought the subject in with her.
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Live
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2014
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Milestone
The Oyster Academy, written down
Katy publishes a full curriculum for the trade: species and appellations of the British Isles, safe storage of live and prepared oysters, shucking technique, presentation and service, oyster culture and terminology, and pairing. A structured qualification, nine years before anyone else claimed to have invented one.
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Live
Abergavenny Food Festival
Katy isn’t demonstrating so much as campaigning, arguing from the stage that Britain has forgotten how to think about its own oysters. Someone films it.
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Live
Mumbles Oyster Festival
Oystermouth, Swansea, 18 October. The place is named after the trade.
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Live
Newquay Fish Festival
16 September. Katy runs a Mangez-Moi pop-up oyster bar on her own harbour.
SeafoodSource
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Live
Soho House London, masterclass and rooftop BBQ
23 September.
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Press
la Repubblica
21 November. The Italians notice before most of the British press does.
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Press
The Resident: “Meet Katy Davidson, oyster lady”
A London profile.
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Milestone
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2015
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Milestone
London Oyster Week starts signing people up
Katy’s site is live and taking public registrations from 12 April, three years before the first week actually runs. Among the early names: seafood journalists, oyster growers, an energy company offering to help, and a brewer who wants his oyster stout in it.
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Broadcast
Rude Health: “The ‘S’ Word”
3 February. Back in front of the camera, still ranting.
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Press
Sunseeker International: “Ocean’s Heaven”
Six pages on Katy, written by Rob Crossan, who calls her “one of the world’s premier oyster experts”. He will come back three years later and take the full masterclass himself for the Daily Mail.
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Live
Oyster Aficionado Masterclass, Philleigh Way
Cookery school on the Roseland, 4 April.
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Press
The Guardian and AnOther
Including a Guardian pick of the best places to eat in Newquay, her own seafood bar.
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Milestone
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2016
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Press
SeafoodSource: a decade in
19 January. The trade press reports that Katy is developing an industry-standard oyster qualification with the World Oyster Society and the Shellfish Association of Great Britain.
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Live
Padstow Seafood Festival
August.
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Press
“I’m pretty much one of the most experienced oyster handlers in the world.”
Katy Davidson, 2019
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2017
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Live
Port Eliot Festival
27–30 July, on the Flower & Fodder stage. Contracted, programmed, and remembered. Audience members were still writing to her about it in December.
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Live
Speaking at the International Oyster Symposium
World Oyster Society, Bangor, 12 September. She drove up the night before.
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Live
A masterclass at Bentley’s
Swallow Street, Mayfair, 19 September. One of the oldest oyster houses in London asks Katy to come and teach in it.
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Live
Teaching the Guild of Food Writers to taste
4 October. An oyster culture workshop for the people who write about food: nose, mouth feel, body, finish, the same structure a sommelier would use.
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Broadcast
Saturday Kitchen comes to Porthilly
BBC One film Katy out on the oyster beds at Rock, 11 October.
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Live
Filming oyster culture in the Western Sahara
January. Katy travels to Huitres Kandy in Morocco and makes a short documentary about how oysters are grown there.
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Live
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2018
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Broadcast
Live on Sunday Brunch
22 April. Katy shucks live on Channel 4, alongside Sting and Shaggy, to open London Oyster Week.
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Milestone
London Oyster Week, finally
21–29 April. Twenty-five venues across the city, a £10 Oyster Passport, Foodism as media partner, Rémy Martin and Bruichladdich behind the bar. Three years from that first sign-up form to a city-wide festival, run by one person from Cornwall.
Craft Guild of Chefs; Harden’s
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Live
Ostrelier Masterclass at Bocconcino, Mayfair
22 April, invitation only.
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Live
The Great Estate Festival
Scorrier House, Cornwall, 1–3 June. Her own oyster bar in the Octopus lounge. She arrived with the horse lorry.
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Live
Judging the Scottish Oyster Shucking Championships
Stranraer Oyster Festival, 15 September. Seafood Scotland fly her up to score the national competition.
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Press
Global Aquaculture Advocate, Women at work in aquaculture
19 June. An international profile, published in Spanish as well as English.
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Press
The Daily Mail, The Independent, delicious and olive
Rob Crossan takes the full day-long masterclass in Newquay and writes it up for the Mail on 7 November. Two food podcasts follow.
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Broadcast
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2019
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Live
Judging Ireland’s Best Dressed Oyster
Bord Bia bring Katy to London, 14 October, to judge the national competition.
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Press
SeafoodSource on British oysters
October. Her second feature with them, three years after the first.
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Live
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2020
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Milestone
Ostrelier Level 1 at Bocconcino, Mayfair
2 March. Three hours, certification issued, knife included, Academy membership. Two hundred and fifty pounds a head, and it sold.
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Live
Guest speaker, Alaska Ocean Cluster
26 May. Katy is invited onto Ocean Tuesday to talk to an American audience about British oyster culture.
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Milestone
Ostrelier training delivered to the trade
11 December. Professional shucking and service, certified, three years before any comparable credential existed anywhere else.
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Live
Oyster Love on a Cornish Beach
A public masterclass on the sand, run again and again through to 2022. Every review, five stars.
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Milestone
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2021
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Live
Eating the Sea: oyster culture in nineteenth-century London
16 April. Katy in conversation with Daen Palma Huse for The Protagonist Magazine, on when oysters were food for the poor and London ate them by the barrel.
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Live
Great British Oyster Festival, virtual edition
February. Lockdown. She runs it anyway.
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Press
Coast magazine, commissioned contributor
Now writing as well as being written about. A bylined spearfishing feature in March, and a named contributor by the August issue.
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Live
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2022
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Press
Coast Crew
March issue. Profiled on the magazine’s own contributors’ page.
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Live
Éclade de moules at The Arc, St Issey
June. Mussels stood on end on a board and cooked under burning pine needles, the way it is done on the French Atlantic coast, with oysters shucked alongside.
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Press
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2023
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Live
Hosting the UK’s first women’s spearfishing event
And launching Huntress & Home.
XTRATUF
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Live
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2024
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Live
The UK’s first bluefin tuna catch-and-release championship
Falmouth Harbour, 28–29 September. Katy helps organise it, captains the first all-female team, and runs a pop-up oyster bar with St Austell Brewery while she’s at it.
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Broadcast
BBC Spotlight and BBC Radio Cornwall
On camera for the regional news, and live on the radio with Julie Skentelbery on 26 September.
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Press
Kilden Mor
19 April. A long interview on shellfish, shucking, and what nineteen years of it does to a person.
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Live
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2025
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Broadcast
Katy the Oyster Lady, Guardians of Cornwall
19 August. A short film about her for Airbnb, made by Here Now Films.
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Broadcast
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—Year to confirm
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Live
Taste of Christmas, ExCeL London
Katy presents on the Main Stage and the Mixology Stage, and writes the risk assessment for the Action Against Hunger five-star oyster bar, because by then she is the person people ask when they want to serve oysters safely to a few thousand strangers.
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Milestone
Rebranding Wright Brothers
Katy takes on the marketing for the oyster bars, the farm and the wholesale business, and builds them a new overarching brand identity, working out of their oyster farm office in Cornwall, with frequent trips up to London.
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Live
Every entry here is supported by a dated source: BBC programme archives, Companies House filings, festival contracts, trade press and published features. References available on request.
If you want the most charismatic character of the food world, the humble yet alluring oyster, to rock your world, step up and join the #oysterrevolution.
Book Katy Davidson, AKA The Oyster Lady for exclusive Ostrelier Masterclasses, Collaborations for your brand promotion, Events, Weddings, Food Festivals, Specialist Catering, Workshops and Media Engagements.
Or keep an eye on our curated events such as London Oyster Week, where you can join us in a lifelong celebration of oysters.
Katy has immersed herself in every type of oyster culture there is over the past three decades, her knowledge, skill, advocacy work and passion is hard matched in its breadth and longevity.
She will add passion, integrity and a whole lot of #oysterlove to any partnership or engagement
It all started after...
...an intriguing oyster experience on the coast of France during a family holiday, 12 year old Katy was hooked.
Since then, her life has revolved somewhat around this beautiful bivalve.
Katy has been unofficially campaigning for oyster culture for the last decade or so and this has meant appearing at top food festivals around the country, teaching masterclasses, specialist oyster catering, talks, chef demos, opinion pieces, consultancy, media appearances and more.
More often found shucking and oystering at 'the coal face' than online - having worked on oyster farms and set up seafood bars and oyster festivals - this new website is a showcase for a lifetime of #oysterlove
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