Oysters Rockefeller is an oyster dish created at the New Orleans institution Antoine's. Jules Alciatore adapted a similar recipe to use oysters instead of snails during a shortage of French snails and diners' declining taste for them. Antoine's founder Antoine Alciatore created the original snail recipe. Though many New Orleans restaurants serve dishes purporting to be Oysters Rockefeller, the owners of Antoine's claim that no other restaurant has been able to successfully duplicate the recipe. Knock-off versions of the dish were developed to capitalize on the attention that Antoine's signature dish was receiving, but because the recipe for Oysters Rockefeller was passed down from the original founder of Antoine's to his children, and has apparently never left the family's hands, competing restaurants have had to formulate their own recipes. Purportedly, few get the flavor of Antoines recipe right, although many have achieved the trademark green color, a color easily attainable by using spinach in the recipe, as many counterfeit versions of the dish do. However, Antoine's chefs have repeatedly denied that the authentic recipe contains spinach. Since 1899, Antoine's and other fine French/Creole restaurants have been making this rich oyster dish, a combination of oysters, capers, parsley, and parmesan cheese, topped with a rich white sauce of butter, flour, milk, etc.

As the dish is so rich, it was named for the richest American of the time, John D. Rockefeller.

Seafood | Louisiana cuisine