We here in Louisiana have never been bashful when expressing our feeling for oysters. We devour them fried, grilled, broiled and baked, and we ravish them raw. But look around the New Orleans restaurant scene these days and it feels like the relationship has reached a new level of affection, and even infatuation.
To hear some people remember it, oyster bars were once as common around New Orleans as coffee shops are today. But for the last generation or so, the roster of classic places to get a dozen raw had settled into a well-known, and fairly small, circuit of oyster bars, places like Acme and Felix’s, Casamento’s and Pascal’s Manale, and the now-closed Bozo’s in Metairie. Those are the places where I learned to love raw oysters.
Plenty of others have worked their way into the rotation through the years. But what’s changed much more recently is how that steady trickle of new oyster bars has become a torrent.
New restaurants with oyster bars cover ground as diverse as Peche Seafood Grill, the lakefront restaurants Brisbi’s and Blue Crab, Mr. Ed’s Fish House, Trenasse inside the CBD’s InterContinental hotel and the Half Shell on Esplanade Avenue.
Other restaurants have been recently retrofitted to add oyster bars, like the vintage Frankie & Johnny’s Uptown, the Creole restaurant Redemption, found inside a Mid-City church, the Maple Street po-boy shop the Sammich, and Seither’s Seafood in Harahan, which converted its former retail market into a dedicated oyster parlor.
Installing an oyster bar isn’t even necessary to join the trend. Lately, I’ve had late night oysters at the Franklin in the Marigny. I’ve dunked them in a lemony salsa verde at Café B, the upscale neighborhood spot in Old Metairie. And, just walking down Magazine Street one day, I found a spot to eat them out of hand right right there on the sidewalk, with a shucker setting up a makeshift folding table oyster bar outside of Tracey’s Original Irish Channel Bar on certain days.
In one way this makes a lot of sense. So many of the trends in dining now are about fresh, local food and casual, social settings. Oysters embody that, most especially raw oysters, shucked before your eyes and still gleaming with the essence of the sea as you slurp them down in the interactive traditional setting of the oyster bar.
But, this new newly expanded market for oysters comes at a strange and difficult time for the Louisiana oyster industry. Supplies are scarce, with the thinnest harvests that some in the industry have seen. This has had a predictable effect on prices. To put it plainly: they’re through the roof. And yet for consumers it's easier than ever find raw oysters on offer around New Orleans.
Deals and happy hour specials abound, and some bars are even literally giving them away in the same way some places use crawfish boils to draw a crowd.
Mathematically it may not always add up. But then, when we’re talking about the visceral pleasure oyster lovers get from these beauties, logic is not always guiding our decisions.
Acme Oyster House
Multiple locations; acmeoyster.com
Brisbi's Lakefront Restaurant & Bar
7400 Lakeshore Dr., New Orleans, 504-304-4125; brisbisrestaurant.com
Café B
2700 Metairie Road, Metairie, 504-934-4700; cafeb.com
Casamento's Restaurant
4330 Magazine St., New Orleans, 504-895-9761; casamentosrestaurant.com
Felix’s Restaurant & Oyster Bar
719 Iberville St., New Orleans, 504-522-4440
Frankie & Johnny’s
321 Arabella St., New Orleans, 504-243-1234; frankieandjohnnys.net
The Franklin
2600 Dauphine St., New Orleans, 504-267-0640; thefranklinnola.com
Half Shell Restaurant
3101 Esplanade Ave., New Orleans, 504-298-0504; halfshellneworleans.com
Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish House
3117 21st St., Metairie, 504-833-6310; and 512 Bienville St., New Orleans, 504-309-4848; mredsoysterbar.com
Pascal’s Manale
1838 Napoleon Ave., (504) 895-4877
Pêche Seafood Grill
800 Magazine St., (504) 522-1744; pecherestaurant.com
Redemption
3835 Iberville St., New Orleans, 504-309-3570; redemption-nola.com
The Sammich
7708 Maple St., New Orleans, 844-Sammich; thesammich.com
Seither’s Seafood
279 Hickory Ave., Harahan, 504-738-1116; seithersseafood.com
Trenasse
444 St. Charles Ave., New Orleans, 504-680-7000; trenasse.com
