Oysters Bienville @ Pascal's Manale
The most famous of all the baked oyster dishes is oysters Rockefeller. But the best of them is oysters Bienville--if they're made with some care, anyway. Lots of restaurants make the dish, and there's almost no agreement among them as to what the recipe is. If I had to pick a gold standard, it would be Manale's version. Like most of the food there, it's an old-fashioned style. The sauce start with shrimp, mushrooms, and a little bacon, all of which is folded into a roux with a bit of Parmesan cheese and green onions. That makes the sauce sit up in a pile, as well as gives it a fluffy quality. I could eat a few dozen of these, were they not so rich. One other quality: they don't make each shell so full of stuff that you can't eat a half-dozen as an appetizer. [caption id="attachment_19332" align="alignnone" width="400"] Oysters Bienville at Manale's (the golden-colored ones).[/caption]