I am not at Snockey's for the raw, though, but maybe for the rare. When I order a quart of the oyster stew – a soup that consists of a thin cream broth dotted with plump cooked oysters – the man behind the counter says, “This can't be for you.” When I assure him that it is, he says, “I thought it'd be for your grandfather.” Oyster stew, he says, is a dish that seems to have skipped the younger generation.

The rarity I visited Snockey's for wasn't specifically the oyster stew; it was cooked oysters in general. If you'll forgive the pun, I've been stewing on the topic of cooked oysters for the better part of the year, ever since I attended last November's Festival of Forgotten Foods at Reading Terminal Market. The event featured bygone Philadelphia-area eats and information about their history. I tried everything from Pepto-tasting (and Pepto-pink) teaberry ice cream to turtle-fueled snapper soup, but the tidbit that interested me the most was from a sign next to Pearl's Oyster Bar:

Fried Oysters and Chicken Salad. While it seems like an improbable combination, this is a dish with deep roots in Philadelphia history. In the early 19th century, oysters were cheap and plentiful in Philadelphia and chicken was an expensive delicacy. The custom was to serve a small amount of chicken salad supplemented with fried oysters and Pepper Hash to create an affordable meal.

It was a little hard to wrap my mind around the idea that oysters – those $3-a-piece raw treats – were once so plentiful in the area that they were considered a filler food. And while today I tend to think of cooked oysters as the domain of one dish – the New Orleans Po’ Boy – they were regularly cooked up in the Philadelphia area. Chef Daniel Stern, whose regionally inspired MidAtlantic serves fried oysters in a variety of ways, points to bygone local dishes like oyster stuffing and oyster pie. “Oysters were a favorite of our colonial ancestors as well as of Native Americans,” says Stern.

So how'd we go from oyster boom to oyster bust? To answer this, I approached Reading Terminal Market's Sarah Levtsky, who put together last year's Festival of Forgotten Foods. “In the late 1800s and early 1900s, oysters were very plentiful locally, so they were cheap,” says Levtsky. “Oyster saloons were as popular as today's pizza parlors. However, after disease wiped out all of the local oysters in the 1950s, they were no longer affordable to the masses.” That disease, MSX, (a parasite caused disease, Multinucleated Sphere with unknown affinity X), has continued to be a concern over the last 60-or-so years. According to Levtsky, only in the last 15 years have local oysters really began to resurge, as “local fisherman and scientists began cultivating selectively bred, disease-resistant East Coast oysters.”

Now oysters live in a sort of in-between area, keeping their air of delicacy (because really, slurping a raw oyster is a delicious, unique experience) but showing up cooked more and more in Philadelphia restaurants. Their taste and texture varies by variety and how they're prepared. An oyster Po’ Boy at Creole newcomer Catahloula features breaded oysters that were fishy and almost creamy, served on a long bun and with cajun-spiced fries. I tried the Po’ Boy's local cousin, the small-but-satisfying oyster roll at MidAtlantic, where the fried oysters were smooth and salty and topped with fried onions. The gray bivalves in the Snockey's oyster stew, meanwhile, were slightly chewy with an air of very oceany brine.

But one of the best places in Philadelphia to try the cooked oyster is, unsurprisingly, the Oyster House on Sansom Street, where diners can enjoy cooked oysters in dishes like oyster scrapple, roasted oysters on the half-shell, and even a burger with a fried oyster on top (the taste of which is, unfortunately, buried by the blue cheese that also tops the patty). In the past, the Oyster House has had an oyster pan roast on the menu, a version of a classic New York dish that features oysters and a rich sauce served over toast. When I visited recently, though, the pan roast had been replaced with a not-as-local but rather delicious gumbo that prominently featured plump oysters, shrimp, and crab mixed with okra in a warming, just-spicy-enough dish that's perfect for telling the oncoming winter to go screw itself.

The cooked oyster is not precious; it is not served in a wooden box (well, at least not usually). It can make you feel like you are wasting something special, like mixing a fine champagne into Sunny D for mimosas. But the cooked oyster is a Philadelphia tradition, and it is delicious.

Article photos from kthread, via Flickr (Creative Commons)meal photos by author, Eat Drink Philly" photograph from suvodeb, via Flickr (Creative Commons), "Philly" photograph from camardella, via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Meg Favreau is a writer and comedian living in Philadelphia. Check out her website, www.megfavreau.com.