an extravagant New Orleans oyster and pearl
Just some advance warning: this is turning into a rather long post 
Had no idea that there was so much to consider while planning some new oyster and pearl ice art!
my introduction to oysters
I remember a time, probably when I was in about sixth grade, when we were sitting at the kitchen counter and my dad walked in. He said, “I want you guys to try something.” Naturally, we were curious, but we were a bit hesitant when he brought out oysters and cocktail sauce. Realize that this is in Albuquerque, New Mexico, SO far away from any ocean, gulf, or estuary. These were probably the only oysters for miles, since we lived on the outskirts of the city. I’m sure I’d seen pictures of oysters by then, but I’m all but certain that I’d never seen actual oysters.
Ok, cool. Now we’ve seen actual oysters. Wait, what’s the cocktail sauce for? You want us to eat them!? Ok, so how are you going to cook them? Huh? You’re not going to cook them? Yeah, I don’t know about this…
Cut to the end and my dad actually got us to try them. And we actually liked them. The cocktail sauce clearly helped a lot. Still pretty surprising though, considering that I didn’t exactly have world class credentials in my willingness to try new foods. I’d long felt particularly betrayed by my parents with the whole lima bean situation. And there was that time with the octopus too 
a pro photo; I’m not this good at getting good pics at the event. My talents end at the freezer door, apparently. If I can credit the photographer later, I will
thoughts on my oyster and pearl ice art
So now, a couple of decades into my New Orleans experience, I’ve done a ton of oyster and pearl ice sculptures. You’ll notice several examples in this post, of course. In particular, the magenta-hued version that you see at the top and bottom gave me the idea that I could create a nice oyster and pearl ice art piece.
Initially, I’d thought that I could take my usual approach and then just do some cool lighting for my ice art version. When you’re cranking out an oyster ice sculpture for an event, along with all the other sculptures that you have to do, you just grab a couple of slabs of ice and then a cube chunk for the pearl. The most time-consuming part is definitely the pearl. Honestly though, creating the whole thing shouldn’t take more than an hour. (Of course, that doesn’t include all of the other parts of getting an ice sculpture done and set up at an event. So the whole thing takes much longer in the end.)
yet another oyster and pearl ice sculpture that I did in the French quarter
golden mean and golden spiral
But I thought, maybe I could do something a little more interesting than normal. So I grabbed a few oyster shells from a visit to an oyster bar, maybe the one at St. Roch Market, not sure. After pondering the shells for a bit, and trying to decide how to go about the sculpture, I noticed something.
If you drop the golden spiral on top of one of my oyster shells (see below), it’s a pretty good fit. In hindsight, this isn’t really surprising, and I’m annoyed that it didn’t occur to me before. The golden ratio and the golden spiral show up all over the place in nature, and oysters shouldn’t be any different. But it’s definitely going to affect my oyster and pearl ice art design. I haven’t totally worked out how yet though, so stay tuned.
I’ve never been thrilled about how this oyster near the Louisiana Capitol turned out, but I love the LA pearl 🙂
yes, I still enjoy oysters, both ice and real
My fairly early exposure to oysters, courtesy of my dad, made me more than willing to try them again when I got to New Orleans. And they’ve become some of my favorite foods, particularly now that I’ve given up meat with my pescatarian diet. Along the way, I think I’ve found more than my share of pearls in my oysters too! Natural pearls are usually tiny misshapen affairs, but it’s still pretty cool 🙂
New Orleans, of course, has a ton of great oyster restaurants; here are some of my favorites:
Casamento’s: An OLD and wonderful place uptown, with odd tile decor that adds to its allure. AMAZING oysters, but not always open. Make sure to check.
Drago’s: Holy smokes! The charbroiled oysters are fantastic! And both Nola-area locations get people in and out quickly so you’re rarely turned away at the door. This is good because they don’t seem to take reservations very often. (Oops, the CBD location is still Covid-closed as I write this. But the Metairie one is obviously open, as you can see below!)
Red Fish Grill: Perhaps my favorite dish in all of New Orleans is their bbq oyster po boy, seen below. Side note: they are a client, and I’ve been known to request a bbq oyster po boy as part of my payment 
oysters are good for the environment?
As part of my switch to a pescatarian diet (going on 10 years now), I’ve tried to eat foods that do less damage to the environment on the way to my plate. I’m far from perfect in this respect, but I’m overjoyed that oysters have stayed on the menu. Because mollusks are filter feeders, they do a lot of cleanup in their waters.
Apparently, as many as there are now, there used to be far more in the Gulf, meaning wild ones, not farmed ones. Scientists go back and forth as to whether oyster farming is a net good or bad for estuarine waters. However, it’s clear that oyster farming is far better than many fish farming efforts. In order to get to a clear net good, I suspect that oyster farmers will have to widely adopt certain best practices that will have to be determined through study. But so far, I’m pretty comfortable that the environmental impacts of enjoying oysters are fairly minimal. Of course, I’m comparing them to the far greater impacts of other animal food sources.
final thoughts so far on my oyster and pearl ice art
I am disappointed in myself that I’ve so far been unable to work the words oysterama and oysterrific into this post. I had such high hopes for them 🙁
At the moment, this post is similar to my dragonfly and blue crab posts. I’m workign on the concepts and designs for these ice art pieces. Unfortunately, I still have a ways to go. But you get an idea of how the pieces arrive if you follow along.
I last updated this on 9/25/20. I’ll be doing more updates, with like actual oyster and pearl ice art pics. Hopefully sooner rather than later!
