PORT SULPHUR, La. — Paul Prudhomme, the chef who put Cajun cooking on the map three decades ago, was bobbing in a boat on Thursday on a slate-gray stretch of Barataria Bay. A cable’s throw away, Dickie Brennan, a restaurateur from one of New Orleans’s most famous restaurant families, floated on another boat.
They were part of a small flotilla of New Orleans chefs and restaurant owners who left their kitchens to see how one of their most precious ingredients, the Louisiana oyster, was faring in the face of the oil spill. The booms protecting the marsh grass, which were still white near the port, turned progressively darker shades of brown as the flotilla traveled farther into the bay.
The chefs looked on as Dave Cvitanovich wielded a giant pair of tongs and dug up about two dozen oysters from some of the 1,150 acres of oyster beds he leases, which have been closed because of the spill. In happier times, some of those oysters would be basted in butter and sprinkled with garlic, parsley and cheese and then be charbroiled at Drago’s, a restaurant owned by his cousin Tommy Cvitanovich, who was also in the flotilla.
“I hope I’m wrong, but we’ll probably come back in two weeks and they’ll be dead,” he said, wondering how long they can survive the coming tide of oil.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The New York Times.