America has a new oyster shucking champion. He is Andy Rogers of Wiscasset, Maine, which is located on the Sheepscot River, south of the state capital of Augusta.
Rogers,
who is the co-owner of the Jolie Rogers Raw Bar in Wiscasset, claimed the title
at the U.S. National Oyster Shucking Championship, held in Leonardtown, Md., on
Oct. 18, 2026.
Andy Rogers is the first oyster shucker from the State of Maine to win the U.S. championship.
This was Rogers’ first national shucking crown, as he narrowly defeated veteran shuckers Jay Gallet of Empire, La. (near New Orleans) and Isabella Macbeth of Charleston, S.C. Rogers combined speed and style.
The
competition is to see who can pop open a tray of two dozen oysters in the
fastest time, but judges also inspect for “presentation.” Time is added to the
competitors’ scores if any imperfections in the oyster opening process are
detected.
The victory at the U.S. championship event punched Rogers’ ticket to advance to the World Oyster Opening Championship in Galway, Ireland, scheduled for Sept. 27, 2027.
He is the automatic qualifier who will represent the United States in the premier international competition, open only to the very best oyster shuckers from around the globe. Just one contestant per country is invited to compete.
Andy Rogers grew up in Hopkinton, Mass. (about 25 miles west of Boston). He said he “discovered his passion for oysters while studying hospitality management and ecogastronomy at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H.”
He learned to shuck oysters while working a summer job at an oyster bar in Portsmouth, N.H., and began to learn all he could about oysters.
By the time he graduated from college in 2018, Rogers was well on the way toward establishing a catering business with fellow entrepreneur Ryan Jolie as a partner. They began by operating a “traveling raw bar” to work various events.
Rogers also got his first taste of competitive shucking in 2018 while attending the Wellfleet OysterFest on Cape Cod, Mass. Observing the oyster shuck-off there, he was inspired by seeing Wellfleet’s own William “Chopper” Young compete.
(Young
holds three U.S. national shucking titles and won the international competition
in Galway in 2008. The only other American to win in Galway was Cornelius
Mackall of Calvert County, Md., in 1976.)
“I got to see how good you can get at this skill,” Rogers told Christine Simmonds, associate editor of The Lincoln County News, which is published weekly in Damariscotta, Maine. “And that was really eye-opening. I was really fired up to go back and figure out how to do it.”
Rogers competed at Wellfleet in 2019 and made it to the finals, placing ninth overall, Simmonds reported. “I was pretty proud of that,” he said. “First competition at that level, and to be in the top 10 was pretty cool.”
He practiced hard and refined his technique.
Rogers took first place in Wellfleet in 2021, Simmonds said, and he performed well in the U.S. National Oyster Shucking Championship in both 2022 (fifth) and 2023 (fourth).
In addition to his oyster opening talents, Rogers is a ceramicist. He is combining his passions for food with handmade pottery, making some interesting and creative artwork.
One thing has led to another, and now, Rogers is designing oyster knives with an asymmetrical blade, with one flat side and one curved side. He said this design matches the shape of an oyster. He is also experimenting with various grips to give him more control.
Jay Gallet runs the oyster program at Superior Seafood & Oyster Bar in New Orleans. He says competitive shucking is a serious sport. Judges are looking for a clean cut without any shell or grit on the oyster. “It can’t look like scrambled eggs, you know?”
Gallet won the 2022 U.S. oyster shucking title. His resume also includes four runner-up finishes; each time he was defeated by seven-time U.S. champ Honor Allen of Panama City, Fla.
Isabella Macbeth of Holy City Oyster Maven, an oyster and raw bar catering company in Charleston, S.C., received culinary training at Hotelschool The Hague in the Netherlands and earned a bachelor’s degree in education at The Citadel in Charleston.
At the nationals, men and women compete in a combined field rather than separate divisions, with competitors advancing based on their performances.
The top three finishers at the 2026 World Oyster Opening Championship in Galway, Ireland: Honor Allen of the United States (second); Martin Söderström of Finland (first); and Johan Malm of Sweden (third).
Honor Allen, a seven-time U.S. oyster shucking champion and recent runner-up at the World Oyster Opening Championship in Galway, Ireland, returned to the U.S. Oyster Festival this year, although he chose not to compete in the national championships.
Allen, who won the previous three national titles, said he attended the festival this year just “to enjoy the competition and support fellow shuckers.” His appearance followed a second-place finish in the World Oyster Opening Championship in Ireland on Sept. 27, 2026, where he competed against representatives from 16 other nations.
Competing internationally presents additional challenges for American shuckers. Allen said the European flat oysters used in Galway are a different species from those commonly harvested in the United States.
He said limited access to comparable oysters makes preparation difficult. Allen expressed his gratitude to management of Dat Cajun Place Café, in Panama City, Fla., (the restaurant where Allen works) for purchasing a large quantity of European flat oysters so he could practice before traveling to Ireland.
That preparation mattered because the contest rewards more than speed. Allen and Martin Söderström of Finland each opened a tray of 30 oysters in 2 minutes, 34 seconds.
After judges inspected their trays and assessed penalties, Söderström’s final time was 3 minutes, 30 seconds – one second better than Allen.
“One second, I would have tied. Two seconds…I would have won,” Allen said.
Here is Honor Allen hard at work in his younger days.
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