Casamento's

4330 Magazine St., New Orleans, LA - (504) 895-9761

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Posted By Michael Stern on December 14, 2003 3:15 PM

Casamento’s is a neighborhood joint that closes for a long vacation every year in the summer, but during the R months, it is a great oyster destination. Be warned: it is a very weird place, one of the LEAST romantic restaurants we know: extremely bright overhead fluorescent lights, tile walls reminiscent of a bathroom, and a waitstaff that shuffles from the kitchen to tables with such angst that you feel sorry for the poor old gals. Casamento's two small dining rooms have only a few dozen chairs, plus room for a couple of stand-up oyster eaters at the bar in front.

Although the famous thing to eat is seafood, and rightly so, some old-timers come for Casamento’s spaghetti and meatballs, or for the fascinating red-sauced platter of well-cooked noodles and slices of meat known as daube. Daube is a curious legacy of the Creole-Italian kitchen, but if it's your first or only visit to Casamento's, go for oysters, soft-shelled crabs, shrimp, or fish.

The best dish in the house is an oyster loaf. It is like a po boy sandwich – New Orleans’ version of a hero – but significantly bulkier. To make an oyster loaf, they fry the oysters so that each one is crackle-crusted. Heaps of these briney-sweet nuggets are loaded between big slabs of sideways-sliced white bread. The bland yeasty bread is the perfect companion for crunchy, ocean-flavored oysters. A dozen or two just-opened raw oysters on the half shell and a full-size oyster loaf is a feast for two.

Overall Rating

Oyster Loaf

Oysters on the Half Shell

Spaghetti Daube

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