This Bay St. Louis restaurant’s decadent seafood tower, fizzy wine a perfect summer meal

Bay St. Louis makes for an enticing, easy summer day trip just about an hour away from New Orleans. The Thorny Oyster has made the food prospects much better once you get there.

I visited last on the tail end of a somewhat longer road trip to Ocean Springs, a trip built specifically around dinner at what is now the crown jewel of Gulf Coast fine dining. That’s Vestige, the tasting menu restaurant that is beautifully blending local ingredients and Japanese influences for a cuisine all its own.

The pretty day that followed called for a slower drive down Gulf-hugging Highway 90 and a stop off at Bay St. Louis.

The Thorny Oyster is inside the boutique Pearl Hotel by the waterfront and is an upscale seafood restaurant along a strip with much more casual ones. It was opened by the same family who once ran Ox Lot 9, the restaurant inside the Southern Hotel in downtown Covington (that space was transformed to become the hotel’s own restaurant, the Gloriette).

Inside, it feels cool, airy and open, and between all the marble and the cluster-style light fixtures above even the design brought to mind the image of an oyster. We got oysters, and a lot more, with a seafood tower that proved a decadent summer feast to share at the bar.

The Thorny Oyster serves towers in two sizes ($49 half/$95 full), this was the full and it proved a decadent summer feast to share at the bar.

Order one up and soon you’re popping shells off hot, buttery royal red shrimp strewn with herbs and pepper (the highlight of the tower), picking apart the snow crab legs, and then sampling through the cold dishes: raw oysters, tuna dip, lobster salad and crab claws.

This is an expensive dish, but there’s a Portuguese Vino Verde called Twin Vines ($25) that is the cheapest bottle on the wine list and a perfect pairing for this, maybe balancing things out a little.

Dinner at Vestige was worth the trip to Ocean Springs all on its own; the temptation of this tower might just led me back to Bay St. Louis to look at the water again before this summer is through.