Rolled Oyster appears as a signature dish in 1 United States cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Rolled oyster · Louisville
A baseball-sized seafood snack: three raw oysters dipped in egg-milk cornmeal batter called pastinga, rolled in cracker crumbs and deep-fried golden.
Phillip Mazzoni and his Italian-immigrant brothers from Genoa opened Mazzoni's tavern at Third and Market in 1884, where they first served rolled oysters as a free giveaway to saloon patrons with a purchased beer or whiskey. The recipe combined three oysters with a unique pastinga batter, rolled in cracker crumbs and fried into a baseball-sized ball. The Mazzoni family held the recipe secret for five generations and the dish became a Louisville-only specialty. The last Mazzoni-family restaurant closed in 2011, ending a 127-year run, and the rolled oyster has become a rare find on Louisville menus since.