IVIC, MICHAEL Misho's Oyster Company

The Trpanj, which is named after a village in Croatia, Misho's Oyster Company, is owned by the Croatian-American family, Michael Ivic, that owns the largest oyster processor on Galveston Bay, Texas. The local oysters are incredibly sweet this year -- so sweet that such famous Louisiana oyster restaurants as Drago's Seafood in Metairie are serving Texas oysters alongside the Louisiana shellfish. "Texas oysters are the best right now," Croatian-American oysterman Drago Cvitanovich told me when I stopped by his Louisiana restaurant last December. The waters of the bay are calm, the sky is blue, and the water temperature is hovering at 60 degrees -- perfect oyster weather. The Trpanj is a typical oyster boat, wide across the middle with a huge foredeck; it looks like a barge with an upturned nose. When the boat's dredge, a five-foot-long metal rake and net contraption, is hauled up, oysters and debris are tipped over onto the work table. The Mexican deckhands sort the "keepers" out of the gray jumble of empty shells and undersized oysters, throwing the legal ones into a growing pile on deck. Then they shove the empty shells and too-small oysters overboard. Houston Press, Robb Walsh, March 25, 2004