Shrimp and Grits

Sauced · Sep 3, 2026 · 1h 10m

For most of its life, Shrimp and Grits was a morning meal, the thing shrimpers ate at dawn while the season was running. Its old names say so plainly: "breakfast shrimp," and the earlier "shrimp and hominy." Then a Chapel Hill chef did the daring thing and moved it onto the dinner menu, and a 1985 New York Times write-up sent a humble plate national.

We get into how it climbed from the docks to the white tablecloth, why grits and not shrimp are the real non-negotiable, where we land on booze in a dish with barely any room for it, and the Charleston bottle that ties the glass back to the…