With an amped-up weekend crowd waiting for orders, Casey Giardina sprinkled pecorino romano over a set of oysters, squinting through the haze of smoke billowing toward his face.
Chargrilled oysters are typical fare in New Orleans, but getting the right amount of fire-and-smoke flavor into seafood is a skill that only some will ever master. Even as a city-wide hobby, chargrilling oysters is a delicate balance of culinary art and science. With millions of tourists traveling along the Mississippi River every year, just a small percentage of them stop at the waterway’s southernmost brewery, where they get to see this expert at work.
Every Saturday for the last three years, Casey Giardina’s portable grill has been filled with seafood, leading to smiling faces and fuller stomachs for those who pay $24 for 2.5 pounds of Viet-Cajun crawfish and $25 for a dozen oysters. A proudly Louisianian chef who sets up at Parleaux Beer Lab from 1-6 p.m. each weekend of New Orleans’ warmer months, Giardina’s grill welcomes customers with perfuming smoke and smells familiar to many who spend time on the bayou every summer or have lived here long enough to train their senses from backyard boils and sharing beers with friends.
Giardina is a Louisiana native sharing southern hospitality through Creole cuisine, forming a popular one-two punch with Parleaux’s tap list. His oysters, smoke-smothered and lemon-drizzled, pair well with the brewery’s Art + Design, a German-style Helles Lager paying homage to the owner’s European roots.
On a Saturday in May, I’m watching locals and tourists alike chat up Giardina for another round of oysters or a pound of crawfish as we discuss why Lagers pair best with sweltering summers—the intense heat makes the style of beer as crushable as pounds of crawfish.
The pairing is one that people come to love, whether out of practice or necessity, as high temperatures feel even hotter in our region’s rising humidity. On this day, the cool beer is a welcome relief as we stand by Giardina’s grill and he puts another dozen oysters on the fire.
Words + Photo by Owen Racer