Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published March 23, 2006 Click here for the current edition The Seafood Situation Our spirits properly lifted by Mardi Gras (both its excess and success), we're in the one time of the year when we have no excuse for not giving our all to the job ahead of us. In New Orleans, work is what Lent is all about. It's certainly not about penance, if that's what the eating of seafood is taken to be. Seafood is our greatest culinary pleasure here. So much so that one of the earliest post-storm concerns we had after "How will we go on living?" was "Are the oysters, shrimp, and seafood okay?" No aspect of New Orleans life revived itself faster than our culture of eating. And no part of that surprised us more pleasantly than the rapid return of the seafood business. The essential truth was summed up to me recently by Harlon Pearce, who owns LA Fish in Kenner, one of the major  wholesalers of seafood in the area. Harlon lost well over a million dollars' worth of seafood to the extended power outage following the storm. He also saw the fleets of fishing boats and the men who man them scattered to the four winds--quite literally, in many cases. But within the first month of his return to business in October, he was back up to nearly all of his former sales volume. And now he says he's selling about 20 percent more than he was at this same time last year. Where's it coming from? Who's buying it? "Most of the seafood we're getting comes from between Grand Isle and Cameron Parish," Harlon tells me. "They really weren't hit disastrously by either hurricane. They're finding the supply of fish is very strong. The storms didn't seem to hurt the fish populations at all." He also says that, while the fleet that usually fishes in Lake Pontchartrain is largely on the ropes, the lake is so full of shrimp, fish, and crabs that it's attracted boats from other places. The shrimp catch has been especially bountiful. And this is the first winter season any of us remembers in which crabmeat has remained not only available but affordable. (It sometimes disappears in the coldest months.) As for who's buying all this seafood, it's easy to see. Although the overwhelming volume that restaurants saw a few months ago has evened out quite a bit (mostly because so many more restaurants have returned to business), restaurants other than the more tourist-reliant ones are very busy. Also, my New Orleans Menu Daily Restaurant Index indicates that while we just passed the fifty-percent mark for restaurant reopenings in general in the metro area, almost three-fourths of the restaurants identified as seafood specialists have reopened. Indeed, we've seen major new seafood houses appear. Both the Acme Oyster House and Felix's--the two long-time rivals on Iberville Street--have opened new locations. The new Acme in Covington (1202 US 190, 985-246-6155) is so busy that even in mid-afternoon it's hard to get a table without waiting for awhile. Felix's new Uptown spot (4938 Prytania, 895-1330) is also bustling, and needs every foot of its oversized bar to hold people waiting to get seafood platters and oysters Rockefeller. Meanwhile, most of the old standbys are back. Drago's (3232 N. Arnoult Rd., 888-9254) came back very quickly, serving free food in emergency mode while waiting for things to get back to normal. Bozo's (3117 21st, Metairie, 831-8666) opened a few weeks ago. The seafood houses in Bucktown, with one exception, are all open again. West End Park was totally destroyed (and will never come back in its old form), but a few blocks away, near the marina, Pontchartrain Point (8536 Pontchartrain Blvd., 288-0711) and Russell's Marina Grill (8555 Pontchartrain Blvd., 282-9980) are once again open. Most of the seafood houses just mentioned are not just seafood specialists, but strongly identified with oysters. In the first few weeks after the storm, it was posited that it would probably be two years before Louisiana oysters made a comeback. This proved to be even more unrealistically pessmistic than the concerns about finfish. The first Louisiana oysters on the half shell I encountered were in mid-October--six weeks after the storm--at the Bourbon House. Soon everybody had them, and the quality has been excellent. That's not just flavor I'm talking about, but salubriousness. The state and federal regulations on oyster fishing and distribution are so stringent that unsavory oysters almost never appear in the market anymore. Those since the storm were checked even more thoroughly, for the presence of chemicals that may have washed into the bays where the oyster beds were. Even those that have problems in normal times checked out fine, and all producing areas were back in business. There has, of course, been an impact. Oysters are more expensive than they were, because so many of them died after being covered with silt during the storm. Also, the storm went right over the heart of the Southeast Louisiana oyster industry in Plaquemines Parish, making an incredible mess of the infrastructure the fishermen rely upon for getting their oysters to market. But I've not been refused oysters anywhere, and what arrives leaves nothing to be desired. The big question mark right now involves crawfish, whose season is beginning to head for a peak about now. You've probably read the stories about how many of the rice farms were flooded with salt water, which kills the shoots that the crawfish eat. (Crawfish themselves don't really mind salt water.) The prediction was that the Louisiana crop would be decimated, the imports will knock all the remaining farmers out of business, and we'd be paying four dollars a pound for boiled crawfish instead of 99 cents. But wait. The weather has been perfect for the wild crawfish. And I've seen at least two seafood houses selling boiled for just over two dollars a pound. We sympathize with the crawfish farmers, but we hear this story from them every year. Let's see how things are a month from now. I don't believe this will be a crawfish-less year. The dark side of the story is that more than a few restaurants have taken the Katrina Excuse to allow them to serve other than Louisiana seafood. To limit themselves to farm-raised fish like red trout, tilapia, salmon, and catfish. Don't let them get away with this. There's plenty of local fish out there. So enjoy some big platters, then humbly return to the huge job we have of rebuilding our city, encouraged by the knowledge that all is well in the Creole food chain. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com