Mussel beach: Coupeville festival brings overlooked shellfish into spotlight

COUPEVILLE, Whidbey Island — Let's be clear: Mussels aren't everyone's favorite food.

Even among adventurous seafood-types who happily consume raw oysters or gelatinous rare salmon, the black-shelled bivalve tends to fall on the lower tiers of the shellfish chain, somewhere between barnacles and bottom-feeders.

"A lot of people had never tried them. They thought they were bait," said Ian Jefferds, owner and general manager of Penn Cove Shellfish, which farms mussels in Whidbey Island's Penn Cove.

"Most people around here are used to shoveling mussels off the clam bed," he said.

But a lot has changed since the Jefferds family began raising mussels — on purpose, no less — in 1976. Mussels now dot local menus, and Coupeville residents can point with pride to rafts whose product has put Penn Cove on the restaurant map.

Coupeville now hosts an annual Mussel Festival, coming this weekend in this historic hamlet perched on the banks of the cove — a place so full of Victorian-era frame buildings that it hardly needs a festival to draw visitors.

"I decided heck, mussels are worthy of a festival," said John Stone, third-generation proprietor of the nearby Captain Whidbey Inn who hosted the first mussel celebration in 1986. "We were eating mussels as a family long before (other) people were eating them."

Initially, the mussel festival was at the Captain Whidbey in January to lure visitors to Stone's cozy, circa 1907 madrona-log inn during some of the worst weather of the year.

Stormy weather or not, the inn is worth a stay. Guests have compared the upstairs rooms at the main inn to ship cabins. It is close quarters, with dorm-style bathrooms down the hall. The walls — knotty pine and peeled logs — are hung with paintings by local artists, along with old photographs, all of which start to feel familiar. Some show local landmarks and others are portraits of the Stone family. It feels as though one has arrived to stay with lost relatives.

To launch the festival, Stone staged demonstrations, meals and presentations — all of it centered on mussels. Even some desserts contained mussels.

"We came up with some pretty innovative recipes," said Stone, who drew on Northwest chefs for ideas.

A versatile little mollusk

Most mussels are served as "steamers" in a pile of shells with a dipping sauce or broth. But Coupeville and mussel aficionados go one step further, adding mussels to chowders, serving them spiced, marinated, chilled, in cream or as a dramatic garnish atop pasta.

This year, 11 local restaurants will concoct their own version of mussel chowder that festival-goers will sample to select a favorite.

"It's a big deal to us here in Coupeville," said Debbie Baum, manager at the Knead & Feed restaurant. The tiny waterfront eatery, winner of last year's chowder contest, ladles out three kinds of homemade soup each day, in addition to baking some bionic-sized breakfast rolls. People behind the counter say their winning chowder entry was a basic New England clam chowder with a generous dose of mussels added just before serving.

"It was chock-full of them! Every single person got at least half a mussel in their chowder," said owner Jeannette Kroon. "That's the secret — lots of good Penn Cove mussels."

These days, the festival is too big for the historic inn. Merchants and Island County Tourism have gotten behind the event, now held in downtown Coupeville. Last year, some 2,000 people attended. Events such as boat rides to the mussel floats and cooking demonstrations are good fun, but the weekend builds to a mussel-eating contest held at 4 p.m. on Sunday.

Stephan Wardell, 51, of Belfair, Mason County, has won the mussel-eating contest five times, beating as many as 30 competitors in one manic, mussel-mowing minute.

One year, he ate 2-1/2 buckets of steamed mussels, drawing his face as close as possible to the buckets.

"The shells don't matter," said Wardell. "If they get in the way, they get crunched."

Shellfish king Jefferds likes mussels so much that he will put one in the microwave for a minute until the shell pops open and eat it plain.

"It's a taste test," he said.

A mild, sweet flavor

In part, mussels derive their flavor from the water in which they are raised.

"Shellfish are a little like the old beer commercial, 'It's the water,' " attests Jefferds. Penn Cove's nutrient-rich waters help the mussels mature more quickly to harvest-size. The mussels have a tendency toward a fattier composition, with a bit more glycogen and lipids than mussels grown elsewhere. Because Penn Cove has slightly less salinity than other mussel-growing areas, Penn Cove mussels have a softer flavor, mild and sweet.

This, of course, is mussels per Jefferds. But Penn Cove mussels won top honors at the Boston Seafood Shows in the late 1980s — the only years the international contest was held.

They are — too often — judged on looks. Lacking the symmetry of a clam or the curls of an oyster, the mussel has a rougher profile. Penn Cove primarily raises Mytilus trossulus, the blue mussel, with a squat shell of varying shades of brown to black. In Europe, where mussels are eaten more regularly, people tend to eat Mytilus galloprovincialis, or Mediterraneans. Compared to the darker, bigger and more tapered shells of the Mediterraneans, the old trossulus looks dumpy. But crack open the shells and it's the smaller trossulus that yields the choicer mussels.

"The meat-to-shell ratio is in your favor," said Penn Cove farm manager Tim Jones.

Mussels are healthful, containing the same amount of protein as red meat but a fraction of the calories. They are often the lowest-priced shellfish. And then, there is the taste.

How it all started

A military family living abroad, the Jefferdses ate mussels steamed and garlicky in Belgian bistros or floating in spices of Korean soups.

Settling in Washington, Peter Jefferds, Ian's father, initially considered going into the oyster business, but it was a saturated market.

"There were a lot of oyster growers but not a lot of them making money," said Jefferds.

Instead, the family saw an opportunity in mussels. Scouting the islands, the Jefferdses pulled into Coupeville in the mid-1970s in a runabout. It was low tide on a sunny day. Mussels clung to pilings, rocky shores and buoy lines. They realized they'd discovered an unusually sweet spot for raising mussels.

The family put in a few rafts and watched as Penn Cove transformed empty lines into leis of mussels.

This time of year, just clearing winter, mussels are at a perfect plumpness. Locals are readying for the annual festival, somewhat worried that this weekend's rerouting of the Mukilteo-Clinton ferry might keep mussel-eaters at bay (see "If You Go"). They hope the bands, the free stuff — 400 pounds of mussels were given away last year — and activities will draw crowds.

Over at Belfair, Wardell, the mussel-eating dynamo, is contemplating a trip north for another round at the mussel buckets.

This year's showdown will be at the Recreation Hall, just as the festival is winding down. Contestants will compete in several heats, and finalists advance to a championship round.

While the contest is open to all, it's primarily for those who are mad for mussels, the person who has eaten mussels all weekend long but is still determined to get "one more bite," said Rita Kuller, festival coordinator. "That's why we wait until 4 o'clock."

Sarah Anne Wright: swright@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2752