Attempting to duplicate Acme Oyster House Chargrilled Oysters

Since moving to Louisiana just north of New Orleans, we have come to appreciate some of the food in this part of the country. One of those little gems is a French Quarter Mainstay called Acme Oyster House. We first tried it a few years ago when dear friends of ours Millie and Thomas got married in New Orleans and insisted we meet at this location for brunch which consisted of a lot of bloody mary’s and there “Chargrilled Oysters.”

I am typically not a fan of raw oysters, at least not gulf coast ones, due to their colossal size. These are made on the grill over an open flame and are stupendous.

Over Thanksgiving Deb’s Parents (my in-laws) were in town and we went here two times while they were here and would have gone more if they were opened on Thanksgiving Day.

So it was time to give it a shot at home. I did a few quick searches on the web for someone who has reverse engineered the recipe and found a few out there. In our case, I ended up not having all of the ingredients so I “winged” it but after doing that here, I would recommend following the recipe to a T.

First start with some fresh oysters, if you can buy them by the dozen that is great, but we struggled with finding them in that small quantity.

The recipe is as follows, starting with the ingredient list.

Two dozen shucked oysters on the half shell
1 lb of unsalted butter
Two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice
One tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Two bunches of finely chopped green onion
20 garlic cloves pureed
One teaspoon of fresh red pepper flakes
Three tablespoons of Chopped Thyme
Three tablespoons of Fresh Oregano
Two tablespoons of creole seasoning
2 ounces of white white
1 cup grated fresh parmesan cheese
One loaf of French bread.

You start by heating the butter, lemon juice, Worcestershire, green onions and all herbs. Cook for 2-3 minutes and stir the whole time.

Het the grill to 350 degrees and place the freshly shucked oyster in the lower shell face up on the grill and use the shell as its own pan on the oven.

Cook until the edges of the oyster cook and the juices in the shell start to boil. Then grate a bit of fresh parmesan on top of it and serve hot. These are great with crackers and hot sauce.

So as I mentioned we attempted the same thing, we drugged out the grill and hooked it up to our tank. We shucked the oysters, and they didn’t smell great, but I still wanted to try them. We needed to add some more of the seasoned butter mixture to get them to taste a bit more like Acme.

As the title suggests, I attempted to make the sauce without all the ingredients, and it wasn’t bad, but it was NOT nearly as good as Acme, so we chocked it up to not following the recipe. We will have to try it again another day.

Here is how ours turned out in the photo on the right. You can also click on the video below and see my daughter narrating and providing color commentary in the video on our webpage and youtube channel.

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