Southern Cuisine: shrimp and grits

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Arnold Zwicky suggests that New Orleans is the source of the popular menu
item shrimp and grits. I have a different suggestion.

The North Carolina chef, Bill Neal, is credited with having popularized
shrimp and grits in the 1980s (or at least made it respectable food for Yankees).
In his 1985 cookbook, Bill Neal's Southern Cooking, Bill refers to the menu
item as an east-coast Southern dish ("Wilmington, NC, to northern Florida"--no
mention of NO). Bill was my friend, and I know that he spent quality eating time
in NO in the 1970s, so I'd think he'd have remembered if NO was the source of
his famous recipe--he loved and respected NO culture, and generally credited
NO where credit was due.   My memory is that I ate shrimp and grits in the
Neal family kitchen in Carrboro, NC, in the early 1970s, not long after an outing
to a beach near Wilmington, though that may just be illusory ecstatic
culinary recall, I suppose.

Bill grew up on the NC-SC border (far from the ocean). I was obliquely (in my
earlier post) suggesting that this might make Bill's cooking, which became
famous among Yankee diners, "Scalawag" cuisine. I suspect he would have found
the facetious label amusing, despite his pride in his Southernness.



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