Chef Robert Wiedmaier’s the unofficial king of mussels; between his D.C.-area restaurants Marcel’s, Brasserie Beck, BRABO and Wildwood Kitchen and three locations of Mussel Bar & Grille, he serves about 8,000 pounds of them each month. He even brews Antigoon, a Belgian pale ale, to drink with them. Here, he muses on his favorite bivalve.

My father’s Belgian and I went to culinary school in Belgium, so I’ve always had a love of mussels. I’ve been doing them for 20 years here in D.C., though at first, people were more into oysters, so I did mussels au gratin instead.

There was a place in Brussels called La Poubelle, which means “trashcan” in French. We cooks would stay till 4 in the morning pounding mussels and Belgian beers, listening to rock ’n’ roll.

La Poubelle did mussels the classic way—white wine, shallots, garlic and butter, served with mayonnaise and Belgian beer. It was a hole in the wall, and when I opened Mussel Bar, it was really an homage to that place, but an upscale version.

Honey mussels are incredible. They’re a new variety from British Columbia. They’re about four times the price of any other mussel, but we’re going to start serving them at Marcel’s.

I drink Orval or Antigoon, my beer. It has great flavor—good Brett notes, and classic coriander and orange—but also important is that you can drink more than one. It’s not too intense.

I love Thai curry mussels. The classic white wine version is our biggest seller, but it’s not my favorite way. You can do so many things with mussels—you can put sausage in there, we do a mushroom version—they’re great adopters of flavor.

People are intimidated by cooking shellfish, but it’s so easy. And cheap! Ask your fishmonger if they can get PEIs or Penn Coves. Smell it. Seafood will tell you everything: If it smells like the ocean, it’s good; if you’ve got one rotten mussel in there, it’ll let you know.

Never go to a seafood place that isn’t busy all the time. It’s like eating at a sushi restaurant when you’re the only one there; how fresh is the fish? If you go to a mussel place and they’re slow, those mussels have been sitting there for a while.

But some people just don’t like mussels. We actually had to change the name—it was originally called just Mussel Bar, but people would come up to me and say, “We never eat there ’cause we just don’t eat mussels.” So we added the “Grille.” And people still say to me, “Muscle Bar? Is that a gay place?”