It began when I boarded the "barge with no name," the crown jewel of the one-vessel Indian Point Marine Farms fleet, co-owned by Peter Darnell. "We tried to name her," Darnell said offhandedly, "but it didn't take." Wasn't it tempting fate to ride in an unchristened boat, I wondered. To be on the safe side, I silently baptized her Nova Lox, a tribute to my morning breakfast.

We chugged through the coves that ring Mahone Bay, stopping every so often for the crew to hoist up lines that were so covered with clumps of mussels that they looked like giant telephone cables. I learned from Capt. Mike Watson that the common Mytilus edulis is shamefully indulged at Darnell's farms, where everything is handed to them on a platter before they end up on one.

First, the mussels are set up in naturally protected, unpolluted coves and inlets. Then over the next two years, they're continually cleaned, preened, and pampered until they're mature enough to harvest. And extracurricular activities? Well, let's just say that during his off-hours Darnell traffics in the world's oldest profession: Several times a year, he oversees the mating of hundreds of thousands of mussels during a wild two weeks of marine debauchery.

But there was only one way to tell whether living this large was paying off. That night I headed to the nearby town of Lunenburg to try its newest and most-talked-about restaurant, Fleur de Sel. Chef Martin Ruiz-Salvador and his wife, Sylvie, the restaurant's hostess, greeted me warmly. But then we got down to business. I discovered that the Indian Point mussels I was about to eat had beaten me to the restaurant by about two hours. When they arrived at my table, they were tender, yet their sweetness stood up to Ruiz-Salvador's use of the powerhouse flavors of garlic, basil, and oregano.

As I sopped up the broth with a bit of bread, I realized that I'd been seriously underestimating these lovely creatures by using pedestrian white-wine broth. If garlic and basil can't keep a good mussel down, think of the possibilities: saffron, turmeric, curry. I decided right there, in front of my overflowing bowl of shells, that if Darnell can mollycoddle his mussels all their lives, the least I can do is spoil mine with exotic spices during their last 20 minutes. But I drew the line at matchmaking; I didn't want to scare the cats.

Recipe
Curried Steamed Mussels