One day a customer walked into the restaurant, went directly to the kitchen window and demanded, “What size shrimp do you use in your shrimp and grits?” I gave the very restauranty answer of “12/15s.” She shook her head and said, “Oh no…no no no no. That’s too small,” and walked straight back out the front door.
I would not have guessed that of all the dishes on our menu, shrimp and grits would be the one guarded most preciously.
Southerners are rightfully opinionated on how their treasured traditional dishes are most properly served.
The truth for shrimp and grits is, the way they feel it should be is most often how Momma or Nana made it, so there are as many ways to properly make shrimp and grits as there are Mommas and Nanas.
Like most beloved southern classics, shrimp and grits has humble origins. It hails, kind of oddly, from the low country, along the eastern seaboard which agriculturally and culinarily is rice country, not corn. It’s thought that this is because the enslaved African American workers who, in addition to introducing the colonies to rice from Africa and worked the fields to produce this valuable crop, should not be fed something so luxurious and profitable. So instead, cheap corn from inland ended up in their rations and most often not much else. They foraged for small shrimp from the tidal pools behind their homes to round out their supper and shrimp and grits was born. The recipe was literally in the name.
From there, shrimp and grits became popular in mom and pop diners in the first half of the 20th century, often served with eggs and eaten at breakfast. In the 1970’s, the popular food critic from the New York Times Craig Claiborne helped catapult it to high end dinner menus after writing about the now iconic restaurant Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, helmed by legendary chef Bill Neal.
Since then, thanks to chefs who fail to appreciate the simple wonders of its main components, shrimp and grits often gets unnecessarily fussy. Cream, bell peppers, tomatoes, even sausage (which is a hard no for us and most purists…shrimp and sausage is its own thing. Bacon and ham, yes. Sausage, no.) got dumped into the pan which skirts the simple basics that really make the dish sing.
A great shrimp broth elevates the dish in ways cream and tomatoes and other superfluous additions never can. Being so far from the ocean makes one of the principal things that separates good shrimp and grits from great—shrimp shells and heads for broth—tricky to lay hands on, so we had to rely on other flavorful bases for our broth. But I guess that’s part of our north-meets-south story.
We went through a few versions throughout the years before finally landing on a broth of dried chanterelle mushrooms. Mushrooms have a connection to the shrimp and grits glory days, thanks in great degree to Chef Neal. Chanterelle broth also has a beautiful rust red color, reminiscent of shrimp broth, and has a deeply savory flavor and aroma. Its savory appeal, of course, is more earthy than briny, but its heart is in the right place and complements the other ingredients very well without running over them like super rich cream would.
Our shrimp and grits gets a simple garnish of crispy country ham and some green onions, so the three principal players, broth, shrimp, and grits, are left to carry the show, which they handle with ease.
I am actually quite heart-warmed by the many highly opinionated elbows thrown at The Southerner on behalf of shrimp and grits. I relish seeing southerners so protective of the things they hold dear, especially the things they grew up with, that were set on the table before them with love by the people they loved.
In our defense, we researched the history of shrimp and grits in some detail, recipe tested extensively before the doors even opened, and tweaked and poked and prodded the smallest details continuously ever since.
I personally have made the dish tens of thousands of times, which is arguably many more times than most any southerner who never worked in a restaurant. It may not be what some consider true shrimp and grits, but you can’t say it’s not a thoughtful and considerate rendition. And it’s damn delicious.
At the end of the day, though, we’ll content ourselves with the notion that we did as good a job as any outsider looking in can do.
