C.J. Gerdes, the third-generation chef and owner of Casamento's restaurant, fries a lot of oysters. But he doesn't use one of those new-fangled electric fryers. Nope, he plunges the cornflower-coated bivalves into two-gallon-size steel saucepans filled with sizzling liquid lard.
Juggling five such saucepans atop a tall gas stove has given Gerdes biceps like a football player. It might not be ergonomically ideal, but that's the way they do it at Casamento's. That's the way they've always done it, since Joe Casamento opened the place in 1919.
Casamento's is like a big, old, Uptown oak tree. It may have changed over time, but not much and certainly not fast.
Basically, the oyster bar and fried seafood mecca on Magazine Street near Napoleon Avenue seems to be pretty much the same as it's always been, from the 105-year-old tile floor to the all-enveloping, cream-colored wall tile -- installed in 1949 -- to the antique art deco fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling.
To the people biding their time in the glow of the antique neon lights on the sidewalk outside, waiting for their turn to enter the narrow restaurant, Casamento's is a timeless treasure. It's one of those increasingly rare refuges from the rush of contemporary life that transport customers to a bygone era, where things remain comfortably trapped in amber.
These are the places that delight locals and visitors alike, demonstrating old ways to new generations. "Nostalgia is a good part of it," said Alicia Whalen, who sat in a crowded corner table with five friends on a Friday in December. There's also the sheer quality of the product. "One thing we know about New Orleans restaurants is, if they're not excellent, they won't make it, there's no longevity," she said.
Marie Wolf, age 90, said she "hasn't the faintest idea" when she first ate at Casamento's, but she's pretty sure "nothing has changed." Her son John, 65, said he tasted his first oyster there. His brother David, 67, said he used to come to Casamento's for dinner with his grandmother, starting in 1973 or 1974. Back then, he said, at closing time, co-owner Mary Ann Casamento would lock the door, then "come take a load off and she and my grandma would talk, talk, talk." Even in New Orleans, very few restaurants have that sort of generational sweep.
An old-school operation
In the front of the house, set snugly into a cove in the tiled wall, rests the cash register where servers ring up orders.
Casamento's is cash only. There's no tapping your Visa on a portable credit card transmitter or any such gizmo.
The ATM near the door is one of the few concessions to the modern era -- though even an ATM seems a bit dated.
If you need to use the restroom in the shotgun-style structure, you'll be instructed to pass through the kitchen, out the screen door, into a semi-outdoor hallway, then hook a left.
Legend has it, in the old, old days, they kept frogs back there, which were beheaded and skinned to order. Happily for the amphibians, frog legs are no longer on the menu.
The stainless-steel oyster bin beside the shucker's station isn't refrigerated, it's chilled with ice.
A reason for everything
Gerdes believes that Casamento's is the only Bunny Bread customer that requests the loaves of soft, white bread are delivered whole. The staff cuts them into one-inch slices for sandwiches. Casamento's doesn't do po-boys. There's a reason for that. There's a reason for everything.
Casamento's may be absolutely precious, but there's nothing faux antique about it, nothing contrived. It's a 12-table, six-employee, no-frills, marvel of "if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it" efficiency.
Gerdes said his grandfather decided many decades ago that French bread gets stale too fast, so Casamento's stopped using it.
"My grandfather didn't like to waste food," Gerdes said.
In the vegetable oil era, lard still fries lighter. And since it's much easier to change the oil in a saucepan than a commercial fryer, the oil at Casamento's stays fresher and the oysters taste better.
The oyster bin isn't refrigerated because the old wooden one that granddad installed worked fine. And when it finally wore out, they replaced it with a custom-made metal model that worked just the same. Why alter the technology?
And, Gerdes laughingly pointed out, the only other restaurant that he knows of where you can walk through the kitchen is Commander's Palace. If it's good enough for Commander's, it's good enough for Casamento's.
A culinary family tree
Gerdes said his grandfather, Joe Casamento, was an immigrant from the Italian island of Ustica. The year after World War I ended, he had his restaurant built on the site of a burned-down newspaper stand on Magazine Street. Here's a piece of trivia for Casamento's fans: Not long after Joe built Casamento's, his brother Anthony built a mirror image of the restaurant up on Broadway, oyster bar and all.
Gerdes said his grandfather was a classic workaholic, who believed that everyone else ought to be a workaholic, too. According to family lore, Joe Casamento and his wife, Elena, got married between shifts at the restaurant, where she worked thereafter.
Their daughter Mary Ann Casamento married Vernon Gerdes, who, before becoming the chef at his in-laws' restaurant, owned a gas station in the 9th Ward and was also a private eye who, according to family legend, may have investigated Lee Harvey Oswald.
Vernon's brother-in-law Joe Jr. was Casamento's master oyster shucker, reputedly able to open a dozen in 45 seconds.
C.J. Gerdes said he worked in the restaurant even as child. The pay was good, a flat five bucks -- which was a lot for a kid in the 1960s. When he was a little older, Grandpa Joe pulled him behind the oyster bar to teach him how to pry open the viselike shells. Gerdes began working in Casamento's regularly at age 14.
Grandpa died in 1979, when Gerdes was 21. His father died 11 years later. Gerdes has been Casamento's only chef since Hurricane Katrina.
Making his mark
Over the years, Gerdes put his stamp on the culinary landmark with a few menu updates. A few.
He added gumbo about 35 years back. Fried calamari, crab claws and catfish were added roughly a quarter-century ago. And even Casamento's bowed to the grilled oyster craze, including them in the restaurant repertoire seven years ago.
The most recent innovation may be the oyster shots -- raw oysters served in a shot glass with bloody mary mix -- which appeared three or four years ago. They're not yet on the official menu, mind you, just a paper addendum taped to the wall.
Doing what's necessary
Gerdes' wife, Linda, who studied business at the University of New Orleans, joined the family restaurant staff in 1978. Their twin daughters, Nikki and Natalie, who are 37, have both had careers outside the tiled walls of Casamento's, but they've also worked part-time in the place for 21 years.
The only criticism you hear about the spot is that it's not open enough. The website -- surprisingly, there is a website -- stipulates that Casamento's is "closed Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays," "closed June, July and August" and "all major holidays."
There was a long-standing supposition that oysters -- often eaten raw -- shouldn't be consumed in the summer months. This could account for Casamento's traditional summer hibernation. Of course, in modern times most restaurants serve raw oysters year-round. But, as Linda Gerdes pointed out, "people don't come in in the summer," so why bother?
The Gerdeses say they could probably add more days or more hours to the popular restaurant's schedule. But, well, nobody's getting any younger -- C.J. Gerdes is 67 and Linda Gerdes is 65. "We do everything ourselves," Linda Gerdes said.
'We want continuity'
This brings us to the classic existential crisis: What's next for Casamento's?
C.J. Gerdes said he's only got four or five more years of lifting heavy, hot pots left in him, but he has "no idea about the future." Once in a while someone offers to buy the place, Gerdes said. When they do, he sets the price at $5 million. So far, nobody's bitten.
Anyway, he admitted, "I could never sell it, or rent it out." If Casamento's is going to stay in the family, daughter Natalie told her dad: "You gotta teach somebody how to cook."
In the meantime, it's "steady as she goes."
"We want the continuity," Linda Gerdes said. "We want it to stay the same."
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