The best oysters in the French Quarter are not in the French Quarter. They are out in the Garden District, and if you desire oysters it is worth taking the street car named Desire.

Founded in 1913, Pascal’s Manale on Napoleon Street serves nothing as small as its street name might imply. A restaurant known primarily for its shrimp – which makes sense – arguably have the best oysters in the Big Easy.

Once you enter the bar, via trolley or car, you will find a warm bar that is usually crowded with people waiting to enter the doorway past the host stand that leads to various dining rooms. Go to the bar and order an Abita or Rolling Rock – which seems to go especially well with Gulf oysters – and pay for your oyster tokens. The oyster bar to the right does not except cash except for the tips which even Jack Benny would provide after the experience.

The oyster shuckers look like they are right out of the Green Mile. I’m not saying that they did time…but let’s just say I wouldn’t want to share a cell with them.

They masterfully shuck beautiful oysters from their sea of ice. The oysters keep coming without registration; no matter how many people are at the bar they keep a mental track of the number they serve. The baker’s dozen is the norm.

You get to prepare your own sauce from the small condiment center across from the oyster bar. Catsup, Horseradish, Tabasco, other Louisiana hot sauces, and Worcestershire sauce are all prominent to let you concoct a sauce that you will brag about and make your neighbors try. Like creating Barbeque sauce, the testosterone level rises when you make your own cocktail sauce.

The oysters are so good and your sauce should be so tangy that you will go back for another token, and another cold beer.

Heading back to the dining area – give yourself a good 15 or 20 minutes before your reservation for the oysters – you will go back to comfortable tables and be tempted to indulge in the Barbeque shrimp – the most famous in NOLA – in butter sauce that the Surgeon General would ban if invited. The shrimp aren’t really barbequed but they are tasty, and you get a cool bib to wear to keep the butter from dripping on your shirt. There are a number of private rooms that comfortably house a party of ten or more.

But with all of the great restaurants in New Orleans, unless you want to do the butterfly stroke in your pool of shrimp-tainted butter, you can opt just for the oysters in the bar and head out for a more memorable meal. Despite the cab or trolley ride, you may be able to accomplish that feat in the same amount of time that you would spend standing in line waiting for a place at the more revered and less satisfying Acme Oyster House bar. D.M.

POST KATRINA: Pascal’s is down, but not out. Reopening very soon is the word on the street, but the restaurant missed JazzFest 2006.