Chefs Brigade Hosts Oyster Study Dinner at Carmo

Chefs Brigade’s Executive Director Troy Gilbert set the tone for the evening and the upcoming creation of a living shoreline as part of the Super Bowl Week in February. Hosting the Oyster Study Group Dinner at Carmo, Gilbert was describing the advent of Chefs Brigade, but he could have just as easily been talking about the collaborative effort on the coastal restoration project. 

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“One restaurant can’t feed the New Orleans Police Department,” said Gilbert. “But a bundle of restaurants can.”

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That’s the spirit behind the restoration project commencing on February 3rd at the Leeville, LA boat launch, which is located in Lafourche Parish. It will be the result of numerous organizations–Chefs Brigade, NFL Green, FORCE BLUE, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL), Verizon, Entergy,  and others– partnering to create a sustainable living oyster reef involving hundreds of volunteers and 59 tons of oyster shell.  

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Since its beginning, Chefs Brigade has harnessed the power of partnerships and connecting organizations. Not surprisingly, Chefs Brigade organized this dinner, seeing the importance of not only bringing all the partners together to get to know one another over a great meal courtesy of Carmo Owner/Chef Dana Honn, but also to remind everyone how critically important projects like this are to coastal communities.

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Chefs Brigade has collaborated with CRCL on its Oyster Shell Recycling Program since 2021, getting a number of local restaurants to regularly recycle its discarded oyster shells. CRCL’s Executive Director Kim Reyher, Communications Director James Karst, Restoration Programs Director Michael Biros, and Oyster Shell Recycling Program Manager Darrah Bach were at the dinner, which started with dredged raw oysters and off-bottom oysters from Eagle Point Oyster Company, which is headquartered in Mississippi. 

“It’s so important to have a living shoreline like Leeville,” Bach said. “We don’t discriminate against Mississippi oysters. We’ll take the shells and put them back in the shoreline.”

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NFL Green, which aims to leave a positive “green” legacy in host cities, has been in operation for more than 30 years under the direction of the husband/wife team of Jack and Susan Groh. During the dinner, Jack Groh spoke to the guests about how the organization long ago decided that it wanted to leave Super Bowl host cities with “permanent footprint” in the spirit of the Hebrew phrase, Tikkum Olam, which translates to “repairing the world.”

That was the idea behind NFL Green’s first collaboration with FORCE BLUE, a nonprofit that deploys special operations veterans to work on marine conservation projects. Super Bowl LIV was held in Miami, and FORCE BLUE members worked with NFL Green, the host committee, scientists and other groups to restore a coral reef. 

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FORCE BLUE’S Director of Special Events/Projects Steve “Gonzo” Gonzalez is a retired Navy Seal and grew up in St. Bernard and he has long hoped to do something similar in the New Orleans area. 

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“Being a member of FORCE BLUE and working with NFL Green allows me to see the beauty in the world,” Gonzalez told the dinner guests. “I’m very passionate about this; it’s my hometown.”

Following the raw oysters, Chef Dana and his staff brought out soft-shell Louisiana Shrimp Nikkei Style: briefly marinated in tamari then seared in olive oil. The shrimp were then topped with scallions, peppers and cotija cheese and served with avocado slices and garlic aji aioli. After that, Chef Dana showed his environmental cooking prowess by serving Gulf of Mexico longfin squid, a species that is often unintentionally caught by commercial fishers and discarded. But not by Chef Dana, who stuffed the squid with andouille sausage and accompanied it with braised cabbage and kabocha squash. 

After dinner, Nunez Community College’s Director of Coastal Studies Jacqueline Richard managed to fit millions of years of evolution into a five minute speech to give diners an idea of how Louisiana’s current coastal crisis occurred. Richard pointed out that New Orleans is part of the Mississippi deltaic plain and is actually some of the newest land created over thousands of years by the river. 

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Due to a variety of factors over the past several  hundred years–protective levees that prevent the river from overflowing and providing rich land reinforcing sediment, manmade oil canals that have allowed saltwater intrusion, and fixing the Mississippi into a single channel to support shipping rather than letting it flow freely and build new deltas–Louisiana has lost more an estimated 2,000 square miles of coastal wetlands. 

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Richard didn’t want the crowd to walk away thinking all hope was lost, and she let them know that projects like the one in Leeville are part of what could be, “returning the environments back to what they were.”

This latest effort will help replenish Leeville’s shoreline, and as CRCL’s Biros told the group, it’s also much more visible and accessible than previous oyster reef restorations. 

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“I’m really excited about this, because it’s near the boat launch so people can explore it on their own,” Biros said.

CB’s Gilbert closed out the evening by pumping up another event that will be taking place during Super Bowl Week: the inaugural citywide Oyster Night that will be happening at restaurants across the New Orleans area on February 5th. Gilbert has already secured a number of CB partner restaurants to be part of the Oyster Night and he is hoping that diners throughout will consume enough oysters that it will smash, officially or unofficially, the current record for the most oysters consumed in one day. 

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Stay tuned for more details on Oyster Night. 

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Photos by Emma Reid

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