Holly Beach sits on Louisiana’s far southwestern coast, where Highway 82 dead-ends into the Gulf. People call it the “Cajun Riviera,” which tells you everything about both the town’s ambition and its actual size.
This is where you go for charbroiled oysters that make Drago’s look overpriced.
Uncle LT’s Oyster Bar operates right off the highway. The Hebert family runs it. They’ve mastered something most restaurants never figure out — how to put fire, oyster, and topping together in ways that make you order another dozen before you’ve finished the first.
The menu lists four types of charbroiled oysters on the Holly Beach Slammer platter. Each one gets a name. Nola. Firecracker. Classic Candy. Le Bon Cochon. The Classic Candy is addictive: Zydeco sauce, candied jalapeño, and pepper jack cheese. The combination shouldn’t work, but it does.
Holly Beach isn’t hiding its oysters behind fancy presentations or white tablecloths. You’re eating at a bar where locals drink beer and talk about what they caught that morning. The Gulf is right there. The oysters came from somewhere close. You can taste it.
The town itself barely registers as a town. Highway 82 runs parallel to the beach. Houses on stilts line both sides. Most of them got rebuilt after Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. The population fluctuates between a few hundred year-round residents and weekend crowds from Lake Charles looking to fish, camp, or eat.
This is working fishing territory. Shrimp boats dock at the Cameron jetties nearby. Commercial fishermen pull crabs and oysters from Calcasieu Lake and the marsh systems feeding into it. The seafood here isn’t trucked in from elsewhere — it’s caught by people who live within 10 miles of where you’re sitting.
Uncle LT’s doesn’t advertise much. The location sells itself to anyone driving the Creole Nature Trail scenic byway. The restaurant sits at the intersection of Louisiana’s coastal highway and the beach access road. You either know about it or you stumble across it.
The Heberts take oysters seriously without making a show of it. Each charbroiled oyster on that Slammer platter gets different treatment — different sauce, different cheese, different heat level. They’re not just throwing garlic butter on everything and calling it done.
Holly Beach doesn’t compete with Grand Isle for tourism or with Delcambre for shrimp festival crowds. It’s the beach town that survived multiple hurricanes and kept going because the people here fish for a living and need somewhere to sell what they catch.
You won’t find Holly Beach on most “best of Louisiana seafood” lists. The town is too far west, too small, too easy to miss. That’s the point. Uncle LT’s serves locals and the handful of visitors who drove all the way out here on purpose.
The oysters are fire-roasted on the half shell. The toppings vary by order. The portions are generous. The prices are reasonable. Nobody’s trying to turn this into a destination restaurant — it already is one for people who know.
Holly Beach sits at the end of the road where the Cajun Prairie meets the Gulf. Uncle LT’s sits on that road serving charbroiled oysters that prove the best food in Louisiana isn’t always in New Orleans.
Uncle LT’s Oyster Bar, Highway 82, Holly Beach
