hey this is matt at rapid creek cidery um talking about one of the more iconic southern dishes uh
shrimp and grits something that i've made on and off for years a lot of chefs have and at least
here in the midwest maybe some people don't really know its origins and i thought i would
talk a little bit about that today the story of shrimp rich is really a story about bill neal
who's a chef from chapel hill north carolina i grew up in raleigh and chapel hill as well
he he was one of the first chefs in the south to really take southern cooking into kind of an
academic direction talk about uh cultural importance micro regionality he wasn't a
trained shelf chef but in like 78 i might have some of these dates wrong but in 78 um
he and his wife went to work at a place called la residence in rural orange county which is in
outside of chapel hill and he did a great job there he got a lot of attention my mom and dad
used to drive there from raleigh which is about 40 minutes away with their friends they
were in kind of an eating and drinking club and i remember hearing about it a lot when i was a kid
um and then in the early 80s he uh he moved into chapel hill downtown chapel hill and opened a
place called crooks corner that was 82 i think and then 85 the new york times took notice and that's
where it all kind of blew up and sherman grits was one of the things they wrote about so shrimp
grits originally was a fisherman's breakfast kind of low country southern north carolina and
coastal south carolina a lot of obvious history there with the grits and the shrimp
coming right off the boats and he took that and kind of did his own thing with it nothing too
out there you know it's got bacon and mushrooms and lemon juice and there was a few really notable
chefs who worked for him at crooks bill smith who went on to become the chef at crooks for 25
years maybe sorry bill if that's wrong and uh john currents who um has a great two great two or three
great places in mississippi obviously everybody here does their own sort of version of that
dish at some point what's really cool is i have known bill smith for years who took over crooks
bill neal died in 91 and that was a big shock to people because it's amazing to think of the
things he could be doing still bill smith was nice enough to give me the original recipe recently
and i thought it was funny because he kind of gave me a list of things that people have kind of
done wrong over the years with it in terms of some recipes people add some stock some recipes people
had this or that and he said that's just not how it was ever made he even said in the note that
bill neal sometimes uh recorded as saying that there was nutmeg in the recipe and
bill smith was like that that that's not true he never did that so that's
kind of interesting you know talking about how recipes change and evolve
so i remember being probably 20 years old and living in chapel hill and we would go to
crooks corner and i think i must have had shrimp and grits for the first time there kind of which
makes sense because it's the original place uh but i always thought it was just such a i guess
at that age i was just starting cooking and to me it was such a odd thing i was like shrimp and
shrimp with grits and i remember thinking that it wasn't something i had seen before
and never really trying it for several years but we made it home on and off for a while there and
i realized that the recipe's not really even in bill neil's book southern cooking
so i was really glad to get bill smith to send me the recipe but when me my friends started
cooking professionally in chapel hill you definitely would see it on menus but also
it wasn't as much as you wanted to see it on many because you love it as a dish you go in some place
if they had shrimp and grits they'll be different you know what's their version what's their version
but some people were kind of afraid to put on menus that point because
it was so iconic to bill neil and to the restaurant itself
and i do remember my mom and dad making it a few times at home after they went out to eat here and
ate that and that was always delicious too because when your parents make something it's always great
and then when i came out to iowa i actually started seeing it on menus sometimes around here
so it's really interesting to see how far it's come it is something you see in the south a lot
at you know higher end places kind of dolled up but it's a great simple dish and like i say all
these people probably have their own versions i worked at magnolia grill with the barkers for um
for a number of years before i moved out here they of course had their own version of sure
of that as well so what was so important about what bill neil was doing was it you know when
the new york times came down and wrote about him in 85 or whatever it was you know no one had taken
southern cooking seriously southern cooking was barbecues and you know pots of greens and this
was the first time that someone took things like shrimp and grits and you know and put them on kind
of a white tablecloth menu to give it to give it the weight and the credit that it really deserved
so that was the first real blow up of southern cooking nationally it really became something
after that in terms of being visible people taking from it from different parts of the united states
making their own things that were southern and that wouldn't have happened without bill neil and
so it's a really important jump step at that point for southern cooking anyway it's a great dish
it's easy to make at home like six or seven ingredients make sure you get some good shrimp
make sure you get some good grits we use grits from early morning harvest which is an iowa farm
i think you might be able to find those at the new pioneer co-op or something like
it um and beyond that it's a quick quick nick on the stove so it's it's a great midweek dinner
or a weekend show off dinner as well so give it a shot and uh if you have any questions about
these books or these chefs reach out to me at rapid creek i'm happy to talk to you
thanks you