Stephen King Can't Stand This Popular Seafood Dish

If you've ever jump-scared your way through a Stephen King novel, you might think there's nothing on the earth that could possibly alarm the horror writer's creative mind. However, there's one popular seafood dish that gives this bestselling author the heebie-jeebies: Fresh oysters. "I'm not a fan of anything slippery or slimy," said King in an interview with Bon Appétit about the foods he loves and hates. "I don't eat oysters. It's horrible, the way they slither down your throat alive."

While this culinary description sounds like something you might come across in a page of King's supernatural novels, his exposition is correct — oysters on a half shell are eaten alive when in their freshest state. Considered a delicacy, these fancy shellfish have a silky texture and a briny flavor that has a savory oceanic quality when eaten raw, which some seafood lovers adore and others find revolting (oysters can be served with a mignonette sauce made of vinegar to cut through their fatty creaminess). The thing is that when an oyster is first shucked, and the muscles that connect it to its shell are cut away, it can continue to breathe for three to five minutes. This means that if you're enjoying a platter of oysters that have been prepared in front of your eyes (or shucked moments before in a restaurant kitchen), they will likely still be alive when you take that first slurp. That said, oysters don't have a central nervous system, which means they aren't capable of experiencing pain.

Perhaps King might approve of a recipe for fried oysters instead? This dish is prepared by dredging the mollusks in buttermilk and flour before deep frying them, which completely eliminates the slithering "down your throat alive" issue that the wordsmith dislikes. Cooking the oysters also reduces some of the moisture inside them and dries them slightly, resulting in a texture that isn't as slippery and slimy as fresh alternatives.

In the same interview, King said that he and his wife Tabitha, prepare simple meals at home. However, he also shared that he likes to eat a "monster" slice of cheesecake before he writes, describing dessert as "brain food" (one of King's sons, who is also a writer, prefers eating crème brûlée before he gets started on his creative work).

Clams are another variety of seafood that King doesn't like, despite growing up in Maine, an area celebrated for its abundance of mussels, scallops, and crabs. Clams "always looked to me like snot in a shell," he wrote in a piece for Literary Hub in 2022. However, he does enjoy fried fish with vinegar and a stack of blueberry pancakes drizzled with maple syrup tapped from local maple trees.