Shucking, cooking and, of course, eating—each stage of the oyster’s journey from sea to plate—will take center stage this weekend at the inaugural Baton Rouge Oyster Festival.
Jolie Pearl Oyster Bar organized the downtown festival, which will take place at Galvez Plaza on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Restaurant co-owner Eric Carnegie recently sat down with 225 Dine to share their motivation for launching the event.
“I came up with the idea alongside my other business partners,” he says. “There are a lot of similar festivals elsewhere, so we wanted to bring Baton Rouge its first premier seafood festival.”
Attendees will be able to eat every kind of oyster dish you can think of—raw, fried, chargrilled, Rockefeller, Bienville and more. Everything will be prepared onsite by local vendors.
While southern Louisiana’s favorite mollusk will serve as the festival’s main focus, there will also be some non-oyster food vendors, cash bars and live music by Spin Doctors and Dirty Dozen Brass Band, among others.
The festival will have a few traditional oyster-centric competitions, including a shucking competition, a cook-off and an eating contest. The winners will take home prizes, one of them four 50-yard-line tickets to a Saints game.
Access to the festival is free, but food and drinks are not. VIP tickets are also available for $75 and can be purchased online. VIP ticket holders will get access to front-row seating for the stage, tented areas for escaping the heat, free Tin Roof beer, free water and soda, private bathrooms and a private cash bar.
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