Photograph by Chris Von Holle
In the culinary world, shrimp and grits have had a remarkable glow-up. Long before the dish became a brunch favorite, it was born of necessity in the Lowcountry marshes of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. For the Gullah Geechee, grits from food rations and shrimp pulled fresh from local waters made for a practical, sustaining breakfast. And grits themselves carry an even deeper history: the Muscogee people were grinding dried corn into hominy starting back in the 16th century. In a way, this broader Atlantic story has a connection to the Queen City.
In the late 19th century, former Cincinnati Enquirer writer Lafcadio Hearn became fascinated with documenting coastal Creole cooking. Hearn—a Greek and Irish man who had violated Ohio’s miscegenation law by marrying Mattie Foley, a formerly enslaved woman—later settled in New Orleans, where his 1885 cookbook La Cuisine Creole captured the ways African, Indigenous, and European techniques converged around whatever the local land and water provided. Hearn carried that same documentarian eye to Martinique, cataloging the island’s own seafood-and-grain traditions in Two Years in the French West Indies. His accounts of African-rooted cooking elevated food born of necessity and acknowledged how it took shape independently up and down the Atlantic coast. Shrimp and grits remained a regional gem until 1982, when chef Bill Neal put a version on the menu at his Chapel Hill, North Carolina, restaurant. The New York Times published his recipe in 1985, which helped the dish gain favor outside of its Lowcountry roots. Locally, quite a few brunch spots offer indulgent versions of this dish. Try them at 6’N The Mornin’ or French Toast Heaven.
- 6’N The Mornin’, 50 E. RiverCenter Blvd., Ste. 20, Covington, (859) 581-6686
- French Toast Heaven, 4633 Montgomery Rd., Norwood, (513) 795-6473
