Where to start? If you are parents, you should definitely teach your boys and girls how to shuck early on. Anyone who can show up on time and shuck reasonably well will always be able to get a job in the restaurant industry right away. Especially with the recent popularity of charbroiled oysters, shuckers are always in high demand and offered a lot more scheduling leeway than other employees. That makes it easy to just shuck a shift or two a week, or shuck at different restaurants, or whatever you need to do to supplement your income.
It is my belief that if you do not have an oyster bar, you do not qualify as a south Louisiana seafood restaurant.
Restaurant style charbroiled or chargrilled oysters are shucked first, thrown on the grill, and topped with a seasoned garlic butter and parmesan mix and served with toasted french bread. That’s one way to do it. The other way to do it is to toss the oysters on the grill and let them steam open in their own juices. This is a little easier and faster at home than shucking the oysters before you grill them. You need a heavy glove to grab the oyster off the grill and shuck it into your own pan of garlic butter. Up in New Roads we would rake some coals from the fire and place the oysters right on top.Â
Oysters go good with pig. Years ago we were roasting a pig at the Our Lady of Carlotta apartments when some guys from East State brought over a couple of sacks they had intended to shuck the night before but got rained out. It was still misting and drizzling that day, but there was a cinder block open carport still standing back then and we set up under what was left of the roof. It was a nice crowd. After the original keg of Milwaukee’s Best was gone we passed a hat and got $238 dollars. I remember that figure because an eight-pack of Miller ponies went for $2.10 back then so that was an amazingly successful beer run.
I’m not going to tell you where to go to get someone to shuck oysters for you. There’s any number of options in Baton Rouge now. Parrain’s (pictured), Acme, Jolie Pearl, Mike Anderson’s, The Bullfish, Drusilla’s, The Chimes and Chimes East, Ralph and Kacoo’s, and even Phil’s is back in business now over in the Southdowns Shopping Center. Where to go for oysters is a deeply personal decision and has as much to do with memories of good times past as anything else. Everyone does the best job they can with oysters even though the raw are loss leaders with very little margin. Shops do a bit better with the charbroiled since the demand doesn’t dip in summertime like it does for the raw and you can generally get a bit more for a dozen charbroiled. But now that sacks and boxes of oysters are packed 100 oysters instead of 200 it is even easier to get together enough folks to have a party. And the kids need to learn how to shuck. And if you are going to fire up the grill to charbroil oysters, some pork chops or ribs will go very, very well with your oysters. Laissez le bon temps rouler.Â