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Anthony Carbone picks up a long-handled metal net and with practised ease and a flick of the wrist dumps a batch of steaming hot, dark red crawfish into a bucket, ready to be served in the Dockside restaurant, in Picayune, Mississippi.

Although the restaurant, confusingly, is next to Highway 11, not on a dock, it is only a stone's throw from the Gulf of Mexico. Anthony gives me one of the little monsters to taste. They're good and spicy, boiled in the family's secret backyard seasoning (part of the secret, I can tell you, is peppers of three different degrees of hotness).

Anthony's uncle and aunt opened the restaurant in New Orleans but moved it to this rather quieter rural location some years ago. Unpretentious, it is bustling with customers popping in for a shrimp po' boy (a French loaf stuffed to overflowing) or a basket of crabs. It's a family affair and they're all welcoming and huge fun, but in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster they can't help but be a little worried about the times ahead.

They've been to a BP claims centre to see if the company will pay them any money, and they haven't yet heard back. BP have said they will pay all "legitimate" claims, but the case of Dockside shows how difficult that is to define.

The crawfish I tasted are $2.99 (£2.09) a pound, and the special -- battered shrimp, crawfish turnover, fries, coleslaw and bread -- sounds a bargain to me at $6.75 (£4.73). But some of the costs to the restaurant are going up.

Anthony says: "The prices have gone up on just about anything local, anything that comes out of the gulf, the prices have already increased. In this economic time, it's not the best time to raise prices."

I ask if that is because it is scarce.

"Yes," he answers. "But a lot of it is because a lot of the shrimp boats are going to work for the oil clean up which is a more everyday job. You're going to get a cheque a day whereas with shrimping you go out one night and make a lot of money and the next day make nothing. So that's putting pressure on the cost of the shrimp."

That's one cost BP might like to cover. The whole point of this restaurant is that it sells fresh, local fare, some of it caught by Anthony and his uncle in their own boats. When the shrimping season starts at the end of the month the waters presumably will still be closed, so they should expect compensation for that. But how much?

Then there is another, trickier problem, Anthony tells me. If business falls off because of customers' fears, that is a direct result of the spill. But will BP pay up for the economic consequences of people acting on unfounded worries? Indeed, Anthony asks, should they?

"Our phone rings every day. People want to know is that safe to eat, is this safe to eat, and that's the biggest problem for us. Are these people going to a steak house or a sea food restaurant?"

We are invited stay and peel a huge pile of crawfish. It is very tempting but duty and the next interview narrowly win out over staying there all evening sucking crustacean heads over a few beers (about the only alcohol allowed in this nearly dry county). I say I'll be back with the family, and I mean it. I just hope their business will prosper and not become another victim of the great spill.

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