New Orleans Food Questions And Comments

Fried Oyster Salads

Jack asks:

On my first visit to New Orleans in awhile, I was aware of a dish that seems to be omnipresent. Oyster salad is not something I recall in the 1970s and 1980s, before I began my 23-year out-of-town hiatus. But now it seems to be everywhere, an especially rewarding lunch entrée. I noticed it the last few days at Ralph’s and at Cafe Adelaide. But it’s a brilliant thing, fried oysters with artful greens. Is it new? When was it invented? By whom?

Tom sez:

The oyster salad began as a crawfish salad, back in the 1980s. The idea was to replace the croutons commonly found in Caesar and other salads with something else toasty, and warm fried crawfish hit the mark. The first place I recall seeing this was on November 11, 1983 at Bouligny, on the corner of Magazine and Marengo. (The Battle of Marengo was one of Napoleon's greatest victories, and where his chef created a chicken dish which still bears the name of the place.) I once knew a guy named Napoleon.

Anyway, crawfish are not always around, crabmeat is too expensive for this use, and shrimp seem more appropriate served boiled and cold on a salad than fried. So the onus fell on the lowly oyster. (Lowly only in the sense that it lies on the bottom of the body of water in which it grows. I do not mean to besmirch the proud heritage of the oyster and its kin.)

It was also discovered, in one of those examples of cross-pollination so endemic in restaurant cooking, that the same remoulade sauce that was being used on the shrimp in the salads mentioned above was also good with fried oysters. Hence the evolution was complete, and the species began generating specie.

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