NEW ORLEANS — Al Sunseri can get oysters shipped from the Pacific Northwest, the mid-Atlantic coast or the Northeast if he needs to, but the customers of his family-owned oyster business in the French Quarter — mostly New Orleans restaurateurs — have palates and recipes geared to the salinity and texture of the Gulf Coast variety.
"Chefs from down here do not like using oysters from other areas of the country," he said. "It's a different product. I've done it in the past, but it's not something they are particularly keen on."
How much of a choice those chefs will have was a big question this week as a huge oil slick floated 20 miles from Louisiana's delicate, seafood-abundant coastline. By Wednesday afternoon it covered thousands of square miles and was being fed at the rate of 42,000 gallons a day from an undersea leak — a bitter, lingering reminder of last week's explosion that destroyed a $560 million oil rig and most likely killed the 11 men still listed as missing.
"All we can do is pray and hope that these people are able to cap this well and collect the leaking oil," he said.
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