Shuckin' Shack ready to celebrate National Oyster Day in Naperville

For those unfamiliar with National Oyster Day, the Shuckin' Shack is ready to educate.

The Naperville oyster bar is celebrating the big day with a party on Saturday. In addition to food and drink specials, shucking stations in the dining room, giveaways and live music, the reigning Oyster King and Queen will be crowned.

Yes, there's an Oyster King and Queen. The king ate a record 170 raw oysters in one sitting at the restaurant, while the queen ate 102.

Perhaps an inspired oyster lover will break a record on Saturday. If it's too tall a task, 36 oysters or more will get a diner's picture on the wall.

"We're going to make a big deal out of it," Shuckin' Shack Oyster Bar owner Kyle Howard said. "We're going to have crowns and robes. We'll make it as gaudy and ridiculously fun as we can."

The Great American Oyster Day Party is slated for noon to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Shuckin' Shack Oyster Bar located at 8 W. Gartner Road just south of downtown Naperville. The Beach Bum Duo will perform from 1 to 4 p.m.

Planning the event was no easy task for Howard.

Because of the $1.25 oyster specials every Monday, the day when the king and queen claimed their records, Howard orders 900 to 1,000 oysters for the anticipated rush. For Saturday, he's ordering 1,200 to 1,400 oysters.

"We have a lot of other food, but we obviously pay a lot of attention to our oysters," he said. "You need to have them fresh. It's good to have a variety, and it's good to have enough quantity so you're not running out.

"We've gotten a pretty good feel for the amount of oysters we'll go through in a day."

Howard is hoping Saturday is the first of many National Oyster Day parties at the Shuckin' Shack, which opened last year as the franchise's first in Illinois.

If nothing else, he'd like to see some locals unfamiliar with oysters give them a try.

"We think it's going to be a lot of fun," Howard said. "Definitely something that doesn't usually happen in the suburbs."