An oyster for your iPhone

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Is there anything an iPhone can’t do? (Insert AT&T joke here.) Now it can help you choose oysters. Oyster guru Greg Cohen has just come out with, duh, Oysterguru: an app that includes a directory of American oysters. You can search oysters by name or growing area and even find them ranked according to their salinity. A dry run at my desk seems pretty reliable. My beloved Olympias are described as medium salinity and “sweet, salty, copper, cucumber.” Another favorite, Totten Inlet Virginicas, are high salinity and “briny, sweetness, mineral.”

If you think you’ve got better descriptors, you can add them yourself for future reference. And if you’re really just getting starting, there’s a directory of restaurants that do a good job with oysters -– in Southern California: Hungry Cat, Water Grill, Blue Plate Oysterette, Santa Monica Seafood and Malibu Fish and Seafood. (I would add the King’s Fish House chain, which is owned by the Water Grill people and sources the same shellfish.)

Oysterguru available on iTunes for $1.99.

-- Russ Parsons