Best Bets: Shrimp and Grits

Everybody I've talked to around here agrees that City Grocery in Oxford was the first place we tried shrimp and grits. I remember ordering it there and thinking this was the most amazing dish ever created. It was so delicious and soothing.

Now, some 25 years or so later, I don't have to leave the state to find shrimp and grits. It's everywhere in various forms. I tried three shrimp-and-grits dishes at Memphis restaurants on a Thursday, tried another variation at lunch on a Friday and was surprised to find it as a buffet item at parties Friday and Saturday night. I also ordered it at restaurants Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, which meant I ate shrimp and grits six days in a row. On the seventh day, I rested. But I still love the dish. I'm not tired of it at all.

"What I like about shrimp and grits is it's got a little bit of everything," said Owen Brennan's executive chef Patrick Gilbert. "It's almost an original surf and turf, if you will. It's got a little bit of meat. A little bit of sausage in there. You got your shrimp, which you can never go wrong with. I believe the stocks really make the dish as well. And then with grits — it's just one of those Southern comfort foods for sure."

Owen Brennan's' shrimp is sauteed with andouille sausage, tasso ham, shiitake mushrooms and scallions over stone-ground grits with smoked cheddar.

Every place I tried featured a different take on the dish.

I had to ask for more sauce at Char. They serve five shrimp with house-made Memphis barbecue seasoning sauteed in a garlic-shallot-Cajun-spiced-butter pan reduction with button mushrooms over cheddar stone-ground grits. "It's got a little spice in it," said Char owner Ben Brock. "That gives it a nice kick."

The Grove Grill chef/owner Jeff Dunham began making shrimp and grits when he and his wife opened a Southern-style restaurant in Westport, Conn. They hired a man who had worked for "one of the first guys to be doing Lowcountry-style shrimp and grits in a restaurant down in Charleston, where it started in the United States," Dunham said. "We sort of developed a recipe we liked. I always described it to guests who didn't understand it as 'polenta and shrimp scampi.' It's made with a pan gravy similar to scampi that you get in a basic Italian restaurant. And, of course, the grits are essentially polenta."

Dunham put shrimp and grits on the The Grove Grill menu in 1997. "The same recipe that I had been using before. And, frankly, it hasn't changed at all with the exception of the tasso ham."

They now cure and smoke their own tasso ham, Dunham said. "So now we use that tasso ham in the recipe. And that's the only variation that's ever been in the recipe since I started doing it about, I guess, 25 years ago."

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Now, shrimp and grits "is pervasive," Dunham said.  "It seems like everybody's got a variation of shrimp and grits, which is great. In Charleston, there are so many variations of shrimp and grits. My wife and I were staying down for the weekend, and we got out of the show about 2 or something and went for a drink and an appetizer and ordered their shrimp and grits to try it. And we spent the next six or seven hours going from restaurant to restaurant ordering shrimp and grits and having a glass of wine. And everybody's was different. It was amazing. There wasn't one recipe that was close to the same."

Some Memphis versions of shrimp-and-grits dishes I tried were even more off the chart. The Half Shell sautes its shrimp in Cajun cream sauce, but instead of the creamy grits, they serve the shrimp and cream sauce over planks made of batter-fried grits. During Sunday brunch, you can get "Benedict Shrimp and Grits," which are the pan-fried grits topped with two poached eggs and shrimp tossed in the Cajun cream sauce.

Izakaya's take on shrimp and grits is shrimp and lobster polenta. I ran into musician/artist Jimmy Crosthwait at the restaurant. A fan of the dish, he said the polenta was "cheesy and creamy and smooth. It's like eating velvet or something."

He was impressed with the amount of lobster and shrimp in the dish. "Besides the sauce, just the portions were huge."

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For something completely different, but very delicious, try the shrimp and grits at Interim Restaurant. Sous chef Phillip Harris, who came up with the recipe, said he began with a shrimp and grits recipe from his aunt in Georgia before putting his own spin on it. "I got here in Tennessee and noticed there was a lot of butter sauce that goes with shrimp and grits," he said. "So, I thought,  'I'm in Memphis. A lot of barbecue. Combine them together. Shrimp and grits, barbecue sauce — you can't beat that.'"

He also uses collard greens in the dish. "Collard greens go good with anything Southern — catfish, chicken, shrimp, barbecue."

And, for the record, you still can order shrimp and grits at City Grocery.

"I worked for Bill Neal at Crook's Corner at Chapel Hill," said City Grocery chef/owner John Currence. "As far as I know, that was the first place I ever saw it on a menu. It was something that I had as a kid as sort of a way to make use of leftover shrimp from Saturday night on Sunday morning. My grandmother made grits and just sort of stirred shrimp and bacon together and just poured it over the top of grits. When I worked for Bill, I always wanted to take it farther than he was going. I was too young to understand the beauty of minimalism at that point. I wanted to dump everything in it."

Six or seven years later, shrimp and grits was one of the first items Currence put on his City Grocery menu."It's changed very little. Now I use Gulf shrimp and coarsely ground local grits. Everything else remained the same as the original recipe for 25 years."

Where to go

Owen Brennan's, 6150 Poplar, Suite 150; (901)-761-0990

The Half Shell at 688 S. Mendenhall Road, (901)-682-3966; and at 7825 Winchester, (901)-737-6755

Char Restaurant, 431 S. Highland, No. 120, (901)-249-3533

The Grove Grill, 4550 Poplar in Laurelwood Shopping Center, (901)-818-9951

Izakaya, 1433 Union, (901)-454-3926

Interim, 5040 Sanderlin, (901)-818-0821

City Grocery, 152 Courthouse Square, Oxford, Mississippi; (662)-232-8080

Reach Donahue at michael.donahue@commercialappeal.com.