NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An early morning workday ritual – the shucking of small mountains of oysters for New Orleans restaurants – fell victim to the BP offshore oil spill Thursday at a 134-year-old French Quarter oyster house where neighbors treated the news like a death in the family.
Amid the din of nearly a dozen men and women hammering and prying at the last piles bags of craggy oyster shells at P&J Oyster Co., Jerry Amato wandered in bearing comfort food: aluminum trays full of scrambled eggs, fried ham, grits and biscuits.
“That’s what we do in New Orleans. After the funeral, we bring food,” said Amato, proprietor of Mother’s Restaurant.
P&J isn’t quite dead yet but, barring an unforeseen reopening of the oyster beds that supply the business, Thursday was to be the final day of shucking at the family owned business.
“I’m going to try and buy a few shucked oysters from some people in Alabama that are still processing oysters and once they stop, I’m done,” said Al Sunseri, who, along with his brother Sal, runs the business that opened in 1876.
Sunseri isn’t sure what will happen to P&J and its employees in the long haul. On Thursday morning he walked through the cavernous shucking area and loading dock on Toulouse Street and nodded toward the shuckers still working with industrial fervor.
“These ladies here, those guys – I grew up with them. We were in our 20s when we started,” said Sunseri, 52.
Curiosity seekers included Jim Cottrell, executive with a nearby antiques store, who said he’d always meant to drop by because, “I wanted to see exactly how they do this.”
Other Louisiana oyster companies say their oyster supplies are also dwindling, prices are rising and the future of their business remains stark and uncertain.
