National Oysters Rockefeller Day Date in the current year: January 10, 2024

Oysters Rockefeller is a seafood dish that is a popular appetizer in restaurants throughout the United States, as well as a popular brunch item in the American South, particularly in Louisiana. It is made by topping oysters on the half-shell with a rich green sauce and breadcrumbs, and then baking or broiling them. The traditional sauce consists of butter and green herbs and vegetables; the exact herbs used in the original recipe are a secret, but it is known that the sauce includes parsley.

American author and skeptic William Poundstone actually carried out a laboratory analysis of the sauce and published a list of its primary ingredients in his 1986 book Bigger Secrets: More Than 125 Things They Prayed You’d Never Find Out. According to Poundstone’s analysis, the Oysters Rockefeller sauce includes parsley, celery, chives or scallions, capers, and olive oil.

The origins of some iconic dishes are murky, with several restaurants claiming to have invented them. However, this is not the case with Oysters Rockefeller. The undisputed birthplace of the dish is Antoine’s, a Louisiana Creole restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans. One of the oldest family-run establishments in the country, it was founded by Antoine Alciatore in 1840.

Oysters Rockefeller was invented by Antoine’s son Jules Alciatore in 1899. He based the dish on an already existing escargot recipe, substituting local oysters for escargot due to a shortage of the latter. Alciatore named the dish after John D. Rockefeller, who was the wealthiest man in America and probably in the world at the time, to indicate its extreme richness.

The original Oysters Rockefeller recipe has remained unchanged for over a century. Many other restaurants in New Orleans and throughout the American South have created their versions of the dish, but none of them are quite the same. Some adaptations include spinach to easily achieve the signature bright green color of the sauce, some are made with diced oysters instead of whole, and some are topped with bacon in addition to or instead of the green sauce.

National Oysters Rockefeller Day was created by Antoine’s in 2017 to celebrate the restaurant’s iconic dish. Of course, the best way to celebrate the holiday is to travel to New Orleans and enjoy Oysters Rockefeller where it all began. However, we realize that very few people can actually celebrate this way, so let us offer you a few alternatives.

You can observe National Oysters Rockefeller Day by going out to a local seafood restaurant that has this amazing dish on the menu, preparing the dish on your own (just make sure that the oysters you buy are really fresh) and sharing it with your friends and family, and spreading the word about the holiday on social media with the hashtags #NationalOystersRockefellerDay and #OystersRockefellerDay.