A rolled oyster is a baseball-sized seafood

Seafood

Seafood is any form of marine life regarded as food by humans. Seafoods include fish, molluscs , crustaceans , echinoderms . Edible sea plants, such as some seaweeds and microalgae, are also seafood, and are widely eaten around the world, especially in Asia...

 dish that is found only in and around Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

. It consists of three raw oysters dipped in an egg-milk cornmeal batter called pastinga, rolled in cracker crumbs (hence the name), and deep fried. They were first served by Italian immigrant Phillip Mazzoni and his brothers in the late 19th century as a free giveaway to their saloon patrons with a purchased beer or whiskey. It is unknown if rolled oysters were actually invented by the Mazzonis, or if the recipe was brought with them from Italy. During prohibition

Prohibition

Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...

, Mazzoni's remained open by selling these oysters in their new restaurant and it became a popular food item all over town. Today, most seafood restaurants and fish fries in the Louisville area will have their own version of these on their menus.