Shrimp Cocktail Quest

Ever since leaving my sister's house in Mississippi, I have been craving shrimp.  Let me set this blog post stage up for you.  You see, at Georgia Blues in Brookhaven, MS, my sister treated me to one of the best meals of my entire life.......all 60 some odd years.  It was Cheesy Shrimp and Grits and I kid you not, I swooned.  Well, I made a contented sound.  I put that first cheesy bite in my mouth and knew I had TRUE southern comfort food....the one you always hear about.


Well, that experience just left my taste buds wanting more--specifically shrimp.  So the other night at a local Midwest City restaurant I tried a shrimp cocktail before my shrimp scampi meal.  See - I told you I was craving shrimp.  I got something that could resemble a shrimp cocktail if you looked really hard.  It was shrimp.  Six of them.  It had a dab of cocktail sauce, and it was in a teeny-weeny aperitif glass, almost miniature looking.  The restaurant was an old restaurant built in the 1980s so I thought I would get a "Shrimp Cocktail".  Now I will grant you, I haven't had a shrimp cocktail since probably 1975, but I was sorely disappointed.  Honey, back then you could get A SHRIMP COCKTAIL. 


Back before Alexis Carrington was fighting Crystal, you could get a SHRIMP COCKTAIL of magnitude.  It was a very elegant and special treat.  They came in a huge, usually stemmed, glass or specifically designed dish.  The shrimp, usually six, would be artfully arranged around the edge and the glass would be garnished with a frilly curled celery stick and a wedge of lemon.  Shredded lettuce would be placed in the bottom with a large serving of cold, cold cocktail sauce over the lettuce.  The more elegant restaurants had dishes that held crushed ice and the cocktail sauce was in a bowl inside the crushed ice, again with the shrimp artfully arranged around the edge.  When the waiter brought one out, it was a thing of beauty, a huge frosted stemmed cocktail glass on plate lined with a napkin.  It left other diners jealous that they hadn't ordered one.


So I guess technically I did have a shrimp cocktail the other night.  I guess maybe we have gotten so used to having these specialty treats that people of a younger generation see them as nothing other than something they add to the menu to appease the older generation.  The elegance of a shrimp cocktail is gone, at least at that one restaurant.


So I am still on a quest for shrimp; specifically a good old 1970s shrimp cocktail.  That experience left me wanting.....still on my shrimp cocktail quest.


I love you.


I tried making my own cocktail the other night, but the shrimp I picked up at Sam's Club just wasn't very good.  The flavor was lacking.........still craving shrimp.