OYSTERS FOCH

A signature dish of New Orleans’s Antoine’s, and there listed on the appetizer menu as huîtres á la Foch, this impossibly opulent Creole creation is toast spread with fois gras pâté, topped with fried oysters, and crowned with Colbert sauce, a dark red-brown variation of hollandaise that includes tomatoes, veal stock, and sherry. Bec fins consider it perhaps the best dish at Antoine’s, but hoi polloi like us might never have known of it had not the very swanky Antoine’s opened its somewhat less formal and definitely less expensive Hermes Bar, where the menu is headed by an oysters Foch po’ boy. This po’ boy was a major hit at the 2010 New Orleans Roadfood Festival, where it staked its claim as the most deluxe street food ever served anywhere. Reflecting Antoine’s venerable history (it’s the nation’s oldest restaurant), oysters Foch was named nearly a century ago to honor France’s World War I Field Marshal Foch. The combination of ingredients was supposed to honor Foch’s soldiers, the pâté representing the mud on their shoes, the sauce their spilled blood.