On a sunny weekday morning in the French Quarter, Blake Sunseri was hosing down the concrete floor at his family’s P&J Oyster Co. as a refrigerated box truck full of oysters rumbled to a halt, briefly muffling the hammering sounds of Willie Dove breaking open more oysters at the shucking table.
It could be a vignette from generations past, just another hard-working day at the French Quarter’s old oyster house.
In fact, Sunseri is part of the sixth generation of family owners now gradually taking the reins of P&J, along with his cousin, Dominic Sunseri.
This year, P&J marks 150 years since its formation in 1876. The oyster processor and distributor is a bridge between fishermen and farmers who harvest Gulf oysters and the New Orleans restaurants that serve them. It claims to be the oldest such company in the U.S.
It is also a time capsule to an older way of doing business around a bedrock piece of Louisiana’s culinary culture, even in a time of great change for the oyster industry and Louisiana oyster culture.
History on the half shell
The name P&J comes from the company’s founders, John Popich and Joseph Jurisich, who were part of a 19th century wave of immigrants from Croatia that have long shaped Louisiana’s oyster business. The Sunseri family, whose roots go back to Italy, joined the company and would eventually take on full ownership of the brand.
The fifth-generation owners, brothers Sal Sunseri and Al Sunseri, ran the company together beginning in the 1980s. Al, 68, is now retired. Sal, 65, is eyeing the same move in a few years…