Kelsey Barnard, Image courtesy of Peat & Pearls
Back around 2017, T.S. Strickland was a food writer working along the coast in Pensacola, Florida—and like all good journalists, he started drawing connections: connections between food and Southern culture, between identity and industry. He saw the gaps, too—the disconnects between farmers and chefs, chefs and consumers. And he saw the place where it could all be indulged, fed, explored: the dinner table.
“I kind of think we’re at our best as a species, and as Southerners we are at our best, when we’re around the dinner table,” he said. “As a society today, we’re sort of more disconnected than ever before, in a lot of ways. I think that there are few things that can bring people together and sort of promote solidarity, just in the human experience, as much as gathering around a table.”
At the time, Strickland had a particular interest in the Gulf Coast oyster industry and decided to host an event designed to elevate the regional oyster. “For the last couple of generations, folks growing up in the South have been raised to treat Gulf oysters like chicken wings, not like a glass of fine wine,” he explained. “For the industry to grow, that had to change.”
Thus was born Peat & Pearls, a concept that started in 2017 as a four-day oyster and whiskey festival in Pensacola—drawing together farmers, chefs, and aficionados all into the same space to share food stories in their purest form.
By 2019, Strickland and his team came to realize the hunger such an event revealed—“We started to realize that there was a demand for these kinds of experiences beyond just oysters,” he said. That year, they started to transition Peat & Pearls from its festival format into a supper club model—hosting events with chefs all across the Southern region.
“‘Hey, let’s come together and have a meal together and just be reminded of the fact that to be human is to be hungry.’ We’re all united in that.”
—T.S. Strickland
Now, in 2022, the concept has had two years of pandemic-induced anticipation and planning before launching its first official season—which includes two dinner experiences in Acadiana this fall.
In its current form, the Peat & Pearls supper club series will travel to eight cities across the South over the course of a ninety-day season (starting this fall in late September and ending in early November), placing its focus on a particular regional food narrative, which will be interpreted by local chefs tapped to curate these intimate dining experiences. At the end of each season, a larger tasting event will be held to bring together all of the chefs, farmers, and diners involved together to celebrate their contributions to Southern foodways.
This fall, Strickland is going back to Peat & Pearls’ roots with a focus on the oyster. Local chefs Jeremy Conner and Kelsey Leger (with the assistance of local chef Matthew Pettus) have each brought their unique takes on the Southern culinary jewel to the vibrant collection of Peat & Pearls menus.
Conner, Executive Chef and Partner at Lafayette’s Spoonbill Watering Hole & Restaurant, who considers himself a champion of the Southern oyster, will be right in his element. “I really try to preach the gospel of Southern oysters,” he said. “When you eat a raw oyster you’re tasting the exact place where that oyster came from, tasting what the water and the weather and the tide were doing. I really like to get those kinds of notions on people’s minds as they eat a dinner.”
Photo courtesy of Peat & Pearls.
For his October 13 dinner, Conner’s menu will feature Grand Isle’s Barataria Beauties “as God intended them: ice cold and naked on the half-shell” and served with champagne; paired with strawberry mignonette, agua chile, and carrot-ginger curry; stewed with finesse and a serving of caviar; and fried atop of braised beef with oyster XO butter.
Conner said that he is eager to take part in a special dining experience like this because of the intentionality coming from both the kitchen and the diners themselves. “When people come to a special event dinner like this,” he explained, “they’re there to have that food, and they’re really excited about it.”
[Find a recipe for Shrimp Stew from Chef Jeremy Conner, here]
Just a few weeks later, on November 17, Chefs Leger and Pettus will present their interpretations of a Southern oyster dinner in Grand Coteau. Chef Leger—who has been involved in several of Acadiana’s most highly-esteemed food concepts, including the Saint Street Inn and Scratch Kitchen—is now setting her energies on a concept in Grand Coteau called the Honeycomb Café, set to open in early 2023. Pettus himself has worked with the Brennan family and at Maison Madeline’s Secret Suppers.
Leger, who created the menu, said she is actually not all that well-versed in working with oysters—but approached the challenge with the fierce strategy of experimentation.
“I thought it was an opportunity for me to learn at the same time as incorporating a lot of different food modalities,” she said. “Definitely vegetables and different ways of cooking oysters, which includes fermenting, and not just necessarily serving them raw on the half shell—give people something that they wouldn’t expect.”
Over the past few weeks, she’s been developing a sourdough starter for an olive tapenade sourdough baked with oysters—which she’ll then slather with truffle butter. She’s going to also be frying oysters, then smoking them, in a boudin blanc. Then, she’s piling them atop sweet potato chips as a Yuzu ceviche. And those are just the appetizers.
The first course is an oyster kimchi small plate, and the second—beurre blanc poached oysters with roasted chicken over Mafalde pasta and Maitake mushrooms. Water buffalo mozzarella cheesecake makes for an indulgent finish.
“You know, I’m constantly … I try not to think about food, but even when I’m laying down or going to sleep, I just get ideas that I need to write down,” she said.
When it comes to chef recruitment, Strickland explained, “we try to focus on chefs who have kind of a narrative sensibility already. And really care about strengthening local food systems, as opposed to just creating great experiences for guests—also having that sort of sensibility of really wanting to champion producers and educate people as well.”
Strickland said that as he and his team traipse the different tables of the South, they hope to not only celebrate the diversity of how cuisine is explored in each city, but also to highlight the things that bind us all together.
“It’s not just ‘Hey let’s come together and have a fancy meal, an extravagant experience,’” emphasized Strickland. “It’s not even just like ‘Hey let’s come together and learn more about where our food comes from.’ But also like ‘Hey, let’s come together and have a meal together and just be reminded of the fact that to be human is to be hungry.’ We’re all united in that.”
A $75 Peat & Pearls Acadiana chapter membership gets you early access to tickets, twenty-percent off ticket prices, and VIP status at quarterly socials. Chef Conner’s dinner will be held on October 13 at 6:30 pm; $150. Chef Pettus and Leger’s dinner will be held on November 17 at 6:30 pm; $175. Tickets will be available to non-members two weeks before the dinner. Find all of the details at peatandpearls.com.
