If you want pearl jewelry at this Soho store, you'll have to use mussels.
At Pearl & the Beast, shoppers can fish for their own mussels, crack the shells to reveal sparkling pearls and create their own personalized necklaces, rings and more.
And you don't have to spend a fortune on your own pearl jewelry: The fresh catch of the day can run you $70-80 per mussel.
Founder Crystal Chen, a 23-year-old Brooklyn native, told the Post that her restaurant is “the first and only mussel specialty restaurant in America” ​​and that business is booming. Special 22 Howard Street Shops.
“We sell about 100 per day on weekends and 20 per day on weekdays,” Chen said.
Pearl seekers can scoop up a selection of large mussels from the store's rectangular tanks, filled with rows of different species of mussels whose pearls are labeled — Baroque, Weird, Edison, Classic — based on the size, shape, color and luster of the pearls inside.
“My favourite is baroque, and the most popular is classic,” Chen said, noting that classic mussels are known for having the most pearls inside compared to other shells, making them easy to pair with any jewellery.
Some customers get lucky and find multiple pearls inside a mussel, and if a customer's mussel is empty, the staff will pick up another one for them free of charge.
And these pearls are real gems: According to the BBC, pearls are rare inside mussels, with “around one in 5,000” hiding a pearl.
After splitting the mussels open with a shucking knife or other tool, customers must explore the shell's slimy interior and push any pearl-like objects out.
Although the search for the pearls is invasive, team members assist with the extraction process, which is followed by a 20-minute cleaning process in which the pearls are soaked in 30 percent water and a powdered substance (what Cheng calls his “secret ingredient”) to remove bacteria and shell from the gems.
After polishing to “enhance their natural brilliance,” jewelers help customers create custom-made sterling silver jewelry incorporating pearl settings, including earrings, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, pendants, hair pins and rings. Selected jewelry pieces are priced separately, ranging from $20 to $80.
And here's the pearl of wisdom: Any leftover gems that aren't set into jewelry go home with the customers, who Chen said can take them home and use them to create more jewelry or accessories. Many creators take the mussel shells home and turn them into jewelry holders, candle stands, necklace pendants, charms, spoons and framed art.
Chen, who launched her company in 2023, says she sources her mussels directly from freshwater pearl farms. While other stores sell oysters with single mussel pearls, the self-taught jeweler claims hers is the first in the U.S. to offer the experience of extracting real pearls from mussels.
Chen claimed that oyster companies open the shells, strategically replace the original sea pearls with mussel pearls, glue them shut and then sell them to customers – unlike her business, which requires pinching the mussel flesh to extract the pearls.
“These oysters are fake, it's a kind of trick,” Chen said.
But there's no trick to Pearl and the Beast, which Chen named after Disney's “Beauty and the Beast.”
“The monsters are mussels. They look ugly, but we've managed to create something very beautiful,” Chen said.