The Right Way to Eat A Oyster

Relax. There’s no right way to eat an oyster. Take your tiny fork and sort of move the oyster around in its liquid-filled half shell to make sure it’s detached. Then put down your fork, pick up the shell, and slurp down the oyster from the wide end—it’s more aerodynamic that way. Chew the fish one or twice before you swallow it. It’s an urban legend that you are supposed to let it slide down your throat without biting into it. Think of an oyster like a grape: if you don’t chew the grape, you won’t get the full flavor.
Oysters usually come with various accoutrements (lemon, cocktail sauce, a mignonette sauce of red-wine vinegar and shallots), but it’s up to you whether you want to garnish your little guy. (Purists prefer not to.)
How can you tell if you’ve been served a good oyster?
You want to see lots of seawater, and the fish should be opaque. If it’s too clear, that means it didn’t get enough food when it was growing. Oysters come in a variety of sizes. Whether you like big or small oysters is a personal thing, but the oyster should look full in the shell and not be too thin or taste too salty. And a bad oyster will smell, well, bad.
Just because a restaurant has a reputation for serving good oysters doesn’t necessarily mean they are quality. It really comes down to trusting the eye of the oyster-shucker who is putting them on ice. If you think the oyster is bad, send it back to the kitchen.