A gloved hand drives a short oyster knife into the hinge of a deep-cupped oyster over a steel trough of crushed ice.
Shell BeltOyster House · Est. 1937

Harvest Tag

Water
Portersville Bay
Salt
22 ppt
Landed
Tue 6:40 am
Count
41 dz

We open
when the
boat lands.

Gulf oysters off Portersville Bay, shucked to order over crushed ice. Doors at four, Tuesday through Saturday. Every dozen comes with its water.

Tonight's board (251) 555-0148

01 — Tonight's board

Every dozen comes with its water.

You will be told which bay, which morning, and how many are left. Not because it is charming — because it is the only thing that decides how one tastes.

Ten Gulf oysters on the half shell laid out on crushed ice in a galvanized tray, with two lemon wedges.
Ten open · Portersville Bay · 6:41 pm
The ice drains. The oyster never sits in water.

Raw · on the half shell

Half dozen

$15

Six on ice, lemon, saltines, horseradish you grate yourself. Cocktail sauce if you insist.

Raw · on the half shell

Dozen

$26

Twelve from one sack, one bay, one morning. Curtis will tell you which before he opens the first.

Off the truck · you shuck them

Bushel

$78

Roughly a hundred count, sold sealed with the tag still wired on. Bring a towel and a flat knife. We will not open them for you.

A working seafood dock at blue hour: wet planking, stacked oyster cages, a line of pilings and a trawler at the far end.

02 — Where it comes from

Tonged, tumbled,
tagged.

Shell Belt Road is the working road out to the docks at Bayou La Batre. This house is named for the road our product comes in on, and for nothing else. There is no ship's wheel on the wall.

Meroir — the water's fingerprint. Portersville runs about twenty-two parts salt; you taste it on the finish, after the sweet.

Off-bottom

Cages suspended in the water column and tumbled by the tide. It gives a deep cup and a clean shell, and it keeps them off the mud.

41 miles

Bayou La Batre to Dauphin Street. We drive them ourselves and they are in the box before noon, still cold from the boat.

22 ppt

Salinity at the lease this week. Under fifteen and they go flat and watery; over thirty and they bite back at you.

03 — The tag

The card is the
whole argument.

Every sack that comes off a boat in this state wears one of these, wired to the neck: what water it came out of, what day it was pulled, how many are inside. Nothing else you eat travels labeled by body of water and date.

We keep the tags in a shoebox behind the register. If you want to see the one your dozen came out of, ask — it is right there, damp and creased, with somebody's handwriting on it.

That is the entire promise of this place. We can tell you where it has been since six that morning.

A fried oyster po'boy on butcher paper in a red basket, with a lemon wedge and a bottle of hot sauce behind it.
Oyster po'boy, dressed · bread from Dauphin Street

04 — The fried side

Not everything
goes down cold.

The fryer opens with the doors at four and shuts at nine, whatever the bar is doing after that. Same oyster, cornmeal instead of the half shell, and it is what most people order the second time they come in.

Hot · from the fryer

Oyster po'boy

$17

Dressed, on French bread, with the lettuce shredded thin so it does not push the oysters out the back.

Hot · a cup or a bowl

Gumbo

$12

Dark roux, okra, and whatever came in on the boat that morning. Some weeks that is shrimp. Some weeks it is not.

Hot · over coals

Chargrilled, half dozen

$18

Garlic butter and hard cheese, run over live coals until the edges curl. Bread comes with it to get the butter.

Always on the bar

Saltines and hot sauce

No charge

Take them. That is what they are there for.

A shucker in a canvas apron and a stainless chainmail glove drives a knife into the hinge of an oyster under a work lamp.
Curtis Ladnier · near end of the bar

05 — The belt

Nineteen years
at this belt.

Curtis Ladnier works the near end. He opens somewhere around six hundred on a Friday, and in nineteen years the mail glove has never let a blade through — which he will tell you is luck and skill in about equal parts.

Ask him what is good tonight. He will tell you what is not, which is the more useful half of the answer.

If it doesn't smell like the tide, I'm not handing it to you.

Curtis Ladnier, shucker
The long horseshoe shucking bar at night under a single pendant, pressed-tin ceiling, walls covered in small signs.

06 — The room

No reservations.
No white tablecloths.

A narrow storefront on Dauphin Street with a pressed-tin ceiling, one long bar bent into a horseshoe, and about ninety years of small signs on the walls that nobody is allowed to take down.

  • Twenty-two stools and four high-tops. We seat you when there is a stool. There is no list, and there is no way to get on it.
  • The kitchen shuts at nine and the bar does not. If you want the po'boy, do not stand there deciding at ten to.
  • Cash and cards, both fine. We do not split a check eleven ways after eight o'clock — one of you settle it and sort it out on the sidewalk.
  • Children are welcome until eight. After that the bar gets loud and nobody is watching where the trays go.

07 — Hours and address

We close when
the ice runs out.

Some nights that is nine. On a good Saturday in November it is a quarter past eleven and we are still hosing down the trough at midnight.

Call the bar
Hours

Tuesday to Saturday
Doors at 4:00 pm
Closed Sunday and Monday

Address

411 Dauphin Street
Mobile, Alabama 36602
Between Joachim and Jackson

Telephone

(251) 555-0148
Call for the count before you drive in for a bushel.

The R months

We are open all year. The bushels are best from September through April, and we will say so if they are not.