Denny Culbert
Excerpted from Mosquito Supper Club by Melissa Martin (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2020.
“I thought strangers talking could maybe save the world.”
This is a refrain that guides Melissa Martin, the New Orleans chef who started her communal dining series, Mosquito Supper Club, in a house-turned-restaurant on Dryades Street in the spring of 2014. The original concept featured two farm house tables in a single dining room where up to twenty-four guests gathered to hear stories of the curated multi-course meal celebrating South Louisiana’s fishermen and farmers and traditions. Each platter of fresh-from-the-coast crabs or oysters, basket of biscuits, and petite cauldron of seasonal gumbo was served family-style, passed from person to person, nourishing body, mind, and soul.
Since then, the concept has evolved to accommodate more diners as Martin’s following grows. “We are the busiest we’ve ever been,” she said. “Now we’re using the space differently. We’ve given people more options to eat here.” The expansion now includes two dining rooms outfitted with communal tables, outdoor garden tables featuring four-course pre-fixe for private seating, and plates served family-style. There’s also a well-stocked bar. “You can walk in and sit at our bar and have a drink and a snack, oysters, or my grandmother’s oyster stew.” This stew, which originated in her grandmother Velma Marie’s Magnalite soup pot, is a comforting fusion of salt pork and briny oysters in a garlic, onion, and tomato-enhanced seafood broth. Martin calls it a prayer and compares it to the bouillabaisses of the south of France. “If I’m traveling around the world, the best thing that could happen to me is if they cooked something that you’d have at somebody’s house.”
[Try this recipe for Lucien's Shrimp Spaghetti, from the Mosquito Supper Club Cookbook.]
The original spirit of Mosquito Supper Club remains steadfast, despite the experience’s evolution into a true restaurant. “If you want to, you can do the whole original supper club, 7:30 seating at tables of ten to twelve. You will sit next to a stranger, that’s what’s great about it,” she said. “For private dining, we offer one 7 pm seating inside or on our screened deck, which used to be covered only with a sailcloth. It’s nice out there with a roof and a heater and Scottish blankets for everyone.”
The manner in which Martin walked me through her space was reminiscent of a mother welcoming college kids for their first visit back home, her pecan brown hair just starting to reveal highlights of silver. The gentlest spring breeze fluttered a sheer window drape that cozies the space. A bookcase hosts lush cascading plants and relics of the region: a pair of painted wooden ducks, a cast-iron Dutch oven, copper gratin dish, and corked moonshine jug—each appearing to have passed through loving, storytelling hands. A stack of treasured Louisiana books is accompanied by a single copy of Martin’s debut cookbook, Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou, which includes personal essays dedicated to each ingredient and its role in Louisiana Cajun tradition.
The storyteller in Martin has another book to write, this one focusing on Cajun food and stories that are more ephemeral. “What are the parentheses between those things life and death?” she asks. “This [book is] about holding together the bittersweet moments of life. In Cajun culture, this happens to involve food. Right now, I have a 6,000-word story about onions. It’s an allium that will make your eyes twitch and cry, pour tears, a good cry.”
“I thought strangers talking could maybe save the world.” —Melissa Martin
A year ago, she hired the 2022 James Beard Award nominee for best emerging chef, Serigne Mbaye to cover her kitchen duties while she focuses on writing. “People have been knowing he’s on his way to greatness,” she said, singing the young chef’s praises and taking the opportunity to shift attention from her own James Beard nomination for Best Chef, South. “What he brings to our table is his attitude and his incredibly great palate.”
Todd Cole
Melissa Martin, owner of Mosquito Supper Club
Nestled within the foodways and the storytelling traditions inherent to Martin’s Mosquito Supper Club, though, is a fierce dedication to preserving the world that created them. “I hope that when people think of Mosquito they think of our mission,” she said, referencing researcher and public speaker Brené Brown’s adage: a person can have twenty values, but they have to choose two. “My number one is sustainability. It’s a huge umbrella. We think about it every single day beginning with the food that we procure. We know our purveyors on a first-name basis and trust them. We recycle and compost. We started with pre-fixe so we wouldn’t waste food. We take time off so we can rest.” Mosquito is open for service Thursday through Sunday, their season running September through July, giving Martin and her staff three rest days a week and a summer break. “We try to eliminate paper waste, so we found some old chalkboards and wrote the menu on them.” The chalkboards are propped in each room with the night’s offerings neatly printed in white chalk. The day I visited, it was:
Sweet Potato Biscuit with Steen’s Butter
Bright Side Oysters with Mignonette, Pickled Shrimp with Toast, and Crawfish Sliders
Maxine’s Shrimp and Okra Gumbo
Market Salad with Romanesco, Greens, and Parm, and Stuffed Crabs
Strawberries Sorbet and Buttermilk Ice Cream with a Cookie and Benne Seeds
Martin could name the precise plot of earth and sea where each item came from and who grew or caught it. Sustainability sits on the front burner.
“We’ve been feeding people and spreading the word about South Louisiana,” Martin went on. “When the book came out, we got to have a dialogue.” Last year, when Hurricane Ida devastated the Louisiana Gulf Coast region, those conversations about sustainability extended to community outreach, defining Martin’s second core value. “We got to catapult the brand to fundraise for this [place] that I love,” she said. Her grassroots efforts, which she launched in the form of bayoufund.org in the wake of storm recovery, quickly amassed a long list of local partners willing to help—through the Helio Foundation in Terrebonne Parish—get cash payments to residents who had lost their homes. Martin said that she was amazed at the amount of money that came in (“It’s still coming in.”). “I looked at my Instagram with 40,000 followers and thought if everyone gives five dollars, we can raise a lot of money. We can buy electrical boxes, we can install new electrical poles. Last time I checked we got close to a million dollars, including all the private donations. We were able to make a difference. We focused on getting funds to families and had a ‘Float the Boat’ fund to help the shrimpers and fishermen recover their boats and fix their crab traps.” The “IDA” story on Mosquito Supper Club’s Instagram page recalls the wreckage the August 2021 hurricane caused with a simple request: “please don’t forget the bayou.”
[Read this: Copper Vine—Tastings built on values of nostalgia and communion]
The rebuilding of Martin’s home parish, Terrebonne, and the neighboring communities on the bayou began overnight after the monster storm almost ripped parishes off the map. “All these people, all these great local shops, stepped up. Tabasco, Bywater American Bistro, Mossy Oak, I can’t even name them all,” Martin said. “The work Krewe of Red Beans did on the bayou was just incredible. They sent their musicians door to door asking ‘What do you need?’ I was on my phone twenty-four hours a day until I reopened the restaurant.” Martin’s dedicated work earned the attention of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, who recognized her and partners Jonathan Foret, Reagan Creppell and Genie Ardoin with the Hurricane Ida Award for Coastal Stewardship in May.
Mosquito Supper Club is closed on Wednesdays, part of Martin’s dedication to sustainability, which extends to caring for her employees. But on the mid-week afternoon when I visited, the front gate was open, signaling welcome. The wooden MOSQUITO sign told me I’d found the right place—this world permeated by Southern hospitality at its purest. Martin and her staff were there, preparing for a fundraiser dinner for New Orleans public television program WYES in April. The work continues—Mosquito’s place within its community consistently emerging as one of contribution and preservation, generosity and appreciation. Really, Martin said, it’s always been, simply, about humanity.
