Matt Pace cooked out of Cafe Booqoo in Brooklyn before landing at Elysianne in Amsterdam, which is not the usual trajectory for a fried oyster po'boy specialist, but good cooking does not have a fixed address. His po'boy won because he understood that it is not a sandwich so much as a compression problem: everything has to hold together in the forty-five seconds between assembly and the first bite.
His oysters went through a double dredge — seasoned cornmeal first pass, egg wash, seasoned flour second pass — which builds layers of crust that maintain crunch even under the moisture of remoulade. He dressed the bread last, spreading the remoulade base on both cut sides and then adding the oysters, so the sauce and protein hit the judges simultaneously rather than sequentially. The bread was a French pistolette, lightly toasted inside only, so the crust stayed rigid.
Brooklyn to Amsterdam is a long way to travel, but Pace's oyster po'boy suggests he carried the right knowledge with him.
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