The Best Oysters in New Orleans

A house in downtown New Orleans

In New Orleans, "downtown" is downriver of Canal Street.  "Uptown" is the other side of Canal Street.  Every street changes its name when it crosses Canal Street.  Sometimes it's as simple as South Galvez Street becoming North Galvez Street.  Other times, it becomes as complicated as Bourbon Street becoming Carondolet Street.  We actually have to talk about Carondolet Street fairly often.  It's where the first stop on the St. Charles Avenue streetcar is.  It can get confusing.

What most people call Downtown is actually called the CBD, which is shorthand for Central Business District.  That seems to be Louisiana shorthand.  I've seen signs for the Metarie CBD, and the Mandeville CBD, and the Pontchatoula CBD.  It must make visitors to Pontchatoula (Strawberry Capitol of the World) scratch their heads, because the only business conducted in downtown Pontchatoula year round is the sale of antiques in some dusty storefronts (no offense to the good people of Pontchatoula intended, of course).

Union Station, New Orleans, LA

A lot of people ask me for directions while I'm out on my daily errands.  Some people say your humble narrator has an honest face.  I was walking past the train station (uptown) the other day when a guy with a map asked me where Sedgley is.  I assumed he meant Sedgley Street, which is a street I've never heard of.

"According to this map," he said, "Sedgley is right between Wolverhampton and Dudley."  

"I've never heard of any of those streets and I know a lot of street names," I said.  I do, too.  I've been reading Hope and New Orleans, A History of Crescent City Street Names by Sally Asher.  It's an interesting book, along the lines of Frenchmen, Desire, Godchildren...and Other New Orleans Streets by John Chase.  

Something seemed fishy about what this guy was looking for so I asked to take a look at the map he was holding.  No wonder.  It was a map of the English West Midlands.  You never know who you're going to meet in New Orleans.  I told him it was too far to walk to Sedgley, but I did know where the best oysters in town are.

The best oysters in New Orleans are at Casamento's.  It's uptown, on Magazine Street just before Napoleon Avenue.

À votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.