Couple order oysters on the half shell at New Jersey restaurant, find ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ pearl

A couple visiting a popular restaurant in New Jersey have made an extremely rare find while sitting down to a romantic dinner.

Anton and Sheryl Schermer were dining at Stern and Bow when served the oysters.

A couple dining at a popular New Jersey restaurant have made an extremely rare find while enjoying a plate of oysters.

Anton and Sheryl Schermer, of Tenafly, New Jersey, were in the middle of dinner on Saturday evening when Anton detected something hard “rolling around in his mouth”, according to the Stern & Bow restaurant in the town of Closter, where they were eating.

He removed the object, only to find it was a tiny pearl.

An employee with the Empire Oyster service, which sources and serves oysters at Stern & Bow, said it was an extremely rare find — especially for the type of oyster Anton was eating, which came from Washington State.

The rare find marks the latest instance of a New Jersey diner finding a pearl inside an oyster. Picture: Stern & Bow.

“I’ve shucked hundreds of thousands of oysters in my career and have never found a pearl while shucking,” said Kevin Joseph of Empire Oyster.

“Although rare, I’ve heard of pearls discovered in warm water Gulf oysters but never, ever have I heard of a pearl found in a cold water (Taylor Kumamoto oyster). It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

In addition to being rare, the Schermers’ pearl also came at a coincidental time: The Stern & Bow had only been open for a month.

The restaurant has since confirmed the couple had graciously donated the oyster back to the restaurant, where the owner plans to hang it over the bar in its own frame.

A couple dining at a New Jersey restaurant made a stunning discovery in their dinner.

The rare find marks the latest instance of a New Jersey diner finding a pearl inside an oyster. In 2015, a restaurant patron in New Jersey found a pearl in his fried oyster while dining at Russo’s Ristorante in Washington Borough. And in 2018, another diner — from Edgewater, New Jersey — bit into a pearl estimated to be worth thousands while eating at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in NYC.

“I’ve been here 28 years,” the executive chef of the Grand Central Oyster Bar said at the time, “This is only the second time I’ve seen this happen. And we sell over 5000 oysters on the half shell every day.”

This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission