Making Peace With Oyster Po'Boys

nancyeinhart — Wed, 12 May 2010 07:00:10 PDT

My dear friend Anna always claimed not to like oysters. Having grown up on the Gulf of Mexico, this makes me sad - and suspicious that, as a Wyoming native, she just never had a good oyster. But in New Orleans, she came around.

After sampling her husband's fried oyster po'boy at Parasol's, Anna realized it was just raw oysters that made her squirm, so before we left town, she had to have an oyster po'boy of her own, over brunch at The Old Coffee Pot. I mention this because it's wonderfully in keeping with the oyster po'boy's reputation as an offering from husbands to wives.

One of the country's oldest sandwiches, the "oyster loaf" in the 1800s was called la mediatrice, or "the peacemaker," because boozin' husbands brought them home to make their waiting wives less angry about their misdeeds. In Anna's case, her husband's mediatrice helped her make peace with fried oysters.

Between the Bread

Making Peace With Oyster Po'Boys