Shrimp, Every Way We Serve It

Shrimp turns up in more places on this menu than any other single ingredient — six, by my count, across four different sections. Most people only ever meet it in one of them.

Here is the whole map, and which version suits what.

Every place shrimp appears

That spread is unusual. Most ingredients on a menu like this appear once, in the section they belong to. Shrimp crosses four of them, which means the decision is not really what to order but which form you want it in — fried and shared, in bread, in a wrap, on a steak, or boiled in a bag.

Same ingredient, six completely different meals. The half-pound appetizer portions are the ones to start with if you have not had our shrimp before, since they tell you what the base is before you commit it to a sandwich.

The three half-pounds

Fried, buffalo and garlic. Same shrimp, three finishes, and they are not interchangeable:

• Fried — plain, and the one to order with a sauce cup so everyone at the table chooses for themselves
• Buffalo — tossed in sauce. Sharper and more immediate than buffalo wings, because the coating is thinner
• Garlic — no heat, and the best of the three next to something already sauced

Ordering for a table with wings on it, garlic is the better second plate than buffalo — two buffalo things flatten each other. There is more on how the sauce behaves in buffalo beyond wings.

Shrimp in a sandwich

The shrimp po’boy is the classic version and comes dressed as standard — lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and pickles — in a 7-inch and a 12-inch. It is also L4 on the weekday lunch menu, which brings a side and a drink with it.

The dressing is doing real work here. Fried shrimp is rich and slightly sweet, and cold salad with mayonnaise and something sharp is exactly the counterweight. This is the po’boy where ordering it plain is the mistake. Our po’boy guide covers dressed versus plain across the whole list.

The two people forget

The shrimp wrap sits on the gyro menu with the other four wraps, built with raw onions, lettuce, tomato and a cool cucumber sauce. It is the lightest shrimp order on the menu by a distance — nothing fried in the build except the shrimp itself, and no bread weight to speak of.

Surf and Turf is a Philly: freshly sliced ribeye with cheese, topped with shrimp, on an Amoroso roll. It is the only place on the menu where shrimp and beef appear in the same dish, and it is a genuinely different proposition from either on its own — the shrimp sits on top rather than being chopped through, so you get it in distinct bites.

Why shrimp behaves differently from fish

Two things follow from shrimp being small. It has far more surface area for its weight than a fillet does, so there is proportionally more coating, more sauce and more crunch — and it goes soft faster for exactly the same reason. And it cooks in a fraction of the time, which is why a buffalo coating on shrimp tastes sharper than the same sauce on a wing: the sauce goes on newer.

Shrimp is also one of the most commonly eaten seafoods in the United States, and NOAA’s FishWatch profile for white shrimp covers where the Gulf supply comes from — a short trip from Lakeland by any seafood standard.

Shrimp in the boil

Different animal entirely. In the build-your-own seafood combo, shrimp comes without the head, by the half pound or the pound, boiled in seasoned water rather than fried, and served in a bag with corn and potatoes. You choose the seasoning and the spice level separately, with a minimum of two items in the bag.

It is also in every one of the ready-made combos, which is a fair indication of how well it works alongside crab, crawfish and mussels. If you are new to boils, shrimp is the easiest thing in the bag — least work, quickest to eat. The full guide to how the boil works has the ordering detail.

How much to order

• Half a pound as a starter for two, or a light meal for one
• A pound in a boil for one person eating it as a meal
• A 7-inch po’boy is a full lunch; the 12-inch is for sharing
• For a table, one of each half-pound beats a pound and a half of any one

If you are choosing between shrimp and fish for a table, shrimp shares better and fish holds up better on a plate — the fish side is covered here.

The short version

Six places, four sections. Start with a half pound off the appetizer menu to find out what you like, order the po’boy dressed, remember the wrap exists, and put shrimp in the boil if you want it as an evening rather than a plate. It is on the appetizer menu and the seafood combo menu.

Shrimp, six ways

Half-pound portions, a po’boy, a wrap, a Philly and the boil.

Appetizers

Fried, buffalo or garlic.

Seafood Combos

Build your own, by the pound.

Explore the Menu Order Online

Frequently asked questions