NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Cajun chef John Folse worried in the weeks before Thanksgiving that BP’s oil spill meant he’d have to dish up fowl and fish without his rich, dark oyster stew or fried oyster dressing, anathema to a keeper of Louisiana culinary customs.
 
“It’s kind of sacrilegious,” Folse said last week. “People say, ‘My God, it’s not Thanksgiving without your oysters.'”
 
In the end, it wasn’t quite that bad. Oysters from Louisiana and other Gulf Coast waters are available, just in shorter supply and more expensive because of damage to some Louisiana oyster beds and the temporary closure of others that delayed harvesting.
 
Folse’s oyster delicacies will be on the table at White Oak Plantation in Baton Rouge, where he expects to feed 400 on Thanksgiving. Other restaurants in south Louisiana also are advertising oyster dishes, and supermarkets say that oysters are on the shelves despite the supply problems.
Mike Voisin’s advice is to shop early.
 
“They’ll be available, but I expect high demand and so we expect some outages in certain areas,” said Voisin, head of family-owned Motivatit seafood in Terrebonne Parish, which is supplying Folse and various Louisiana restaurants and supermarkets with holiday oysters.
 
Prices will be higher. Donald Rouse, owner of the south Louisiana supermarket chain that bears his family name, is advertising a pint of shucked oysters for $11.99.
 
“That same container would go for about $8 last year,” he said.
 
Paradoxically, Voisin said, the demand in the Gulf South for oysters is strong, even as nationwide demand for Gulf seafood remains depressed despite industry and government assurances of its safety.
 
Voisin’s business, like any that deals in Gulf oysters, took a hit because of the oil spill resulting from the April explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig — not from contamination, but because oyster waters were closed as a safety precaution.
 
But many of his Louisiana     oyster sources were far enough west that they weren’t as badly effected by a related problem — the diversion of fresh inland water into salt-water areas keep the oil at bay. Whether the freshwater flushing worked at keeping oil out is up for debate, but the flood of fresh water was ruinous for oysters, which thrive on salty water.
 
Although oyster landings are down an estimated 35 percent in Louisiana, oysters are available from other areas of the Gulf. Texas waters are producing a lot of oysters now, and there are some available from Mississippi and Alabama.
 
 
 
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