Casamento’s does not accept reservations, credit cards, or checks. Simply walk under the restaurant’s green neon sign and through the white door and you instantly know you’ve entered a special place, somewhere between Italy and Louisiana; the interior a cross between a shotgun house and the bottom of a public pool. The narrow series of rooms, lined from floor to ceiling in imported tiles, leads in a straight line from the front door to the bathroom in the back of the kitchen. The seafood joint makes for a physical, communal experience, an offer of what was and what remains in New Orleans. Don’t worry, you are in good hands.
The restaurant has stood at the corner of Magazine and Napoleon in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans for over a century. Generations have sat at these tables to feast on oysters, served up raw, charbroiled, or fried atop Casamento’s signature loaf. The menu offers additional seafood sandwiches as well, all served on its lightly buttered, crunchy pan bread, including shrimp, catfish, soft shell crab, or a combination. We had ours “dressed,” which comes with lettuce, tomato, and a smear of mayo.
On a crisp November evening as the dinner shift began, we sat with CJ Casamento beneath a row of tiny purple Christmas trees adorned with black-and-gold New Orleans Saints ornaments. He has been working the kitchen in his family’s restaurant since he was 14, he tells us, as the sounds of shucking and scraping pinged off the porcelain walls. Around us, families, dates, and friends slurped up Casamento’s oysters and sipped frosty beers out of inexplicably small glasses.
CJ’s grandfather, Joe, originally from the tiny volcanic island Ustica – located just off Palermo in Sicily – opened the spot in 1919. He imported Italian tiles to line the interior, in keeping with Mediterranean building design and cleaning regimens.
“He was a workaholic,” CJ recalls. “He married my grandma between shifts and made it back in time to open for dinner.”
Over one hundred years later, that dedication continues to shine through, evidenced by the full tables in each room. CJ believes the community’s devotion to Casamento’s is due to the restaurant’s consistency. While his grandfather’s chicken coop and frog pond are long gone from the backyard, little else has changed for customers over the years, CJ said.
That includes both the building itself and the food offered within. Instead of using the ubiquitous New Orleans po’boy-style French bread, Casamento’s uses its own signature thick-cut pan bread for their sandwiches, or “seafood loaves.” CJ said his grandfather, like many Italian immigrants, opted to use this simpler bread out of concerns about waste and a desire to nourish his customers. Casamento’s oysters are sourced fresh from Barataria parish, located at the toe of the Louisiana boot. They don’t deep fry, they don’t use heavy oil, they don’t do frills, and they don’t open during the hot summer months.
The menu is as slim as the restaurant. Plates of iceberg lettuce and tomato get passed around under the yellow lights, as well as delicious bowls of seafood gumbo and spaghetti for those who are wary of a briny bivalve. But most of the diners in view had started their meal wish oysters, either on the half shell, served with lemon and the holy trinity of Louisiana hot sauces in reach, charbroiled topped with loads of garlic and butter, or in a peppery stew.
“If you come here more than once, we will probably learn your name. And that’s just the beginning,” said CJ’s wife, Lisa, who manages the front of house. “Those came here on their first date,” Lisa says in her warm th-stopping dialect, pointing to two seasoned lovebirds at the corner table. Another time, Lisa recounts with a smile, a woman set down her father’s ashes as she ate a plate of softshell crab. “She brought him for his final feast.”
As Linda chatted, we took in the scene around us – in the kitchen, CJ handed off a plate of chargrilled oysters to a waitress who walked them through our dining room to the front. The green-and-Bordeaux floor tiles glowed, and everyone was beaming.
Then, Lisa’s laugh broke the tableau, pulling us back into her stories. She remembered a couple in their eighties who came into the restaurant one stormy night. Because of the downpour, the old lady took her rain-soaked pants off before sitting down. “She had her whole dinner in her underwear,” Lisa snorted. “I didn’t know what to do but smile. That’s New Orleans for ya.”
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