Lady Oyster, a Phippsburg-based oyster farm tour and tasting company, aims to launch an oyster tasting room in Bath in May.

Located at 1 Shaw St., where Lady Oyster has built its own commercial kitchen, the 300-square-foot, four-seat space billed as The Parlor will serve as what the Lady Oyster website calls “Maine’s smallest oyster bar.”

“The concept is sort of like a wine tasting room, but for oysters,” said Lady Oyster founder and owner Virginia Shaffer. Customers can order flights of oysters with mignonette, house-baked focaccia and wines from a rotating selection. The Parlor will feature three new wines and oysters from three different farms each week, with themed offerings like oysters from women-owned farms or farms supported by marine biologists.

The Parlor is slated to launch Saturday, May 2, and will be open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 7:30 p.m. Shaffer said the tasting room will be staffed by specialists certified through the Oyster Master Guild, “so when people come in they’ll be able to access somebody who knows a whole lot about oysters.”

The Parlor will also sell unshucked oysters retail. “What’s great about opening an oyster retail place is that we don’t really have anywhere to buy all of these local farms’ oysters between Portland and Damariscotta, unless you’re going direct to the farm location,” Shaffer said. “So we hope this creates a really cool space for people to continue to try oysters from the local farms in our area.”

The Times Record Sustaining Sponsor
We believe a community must be informed to thrive. bowdoin.edu