Who Moved My Shrimp?

Seafood is tricky to source, especially when you live in the desert. I don’t often have the option of going down to the docks and dealing direct with fishermen or fishmongers. When I do travel to the coasts or the Gulf, and go right to the docks, I still don’t really know anyone or who is who and what is what. I am just another tourist making an effort and hoping to get lucky.

My parents used to vacation in Mexico, a roughly six hour drive from Phoenix, AZ in the 70’s and 80’s. They would bring back jumbo shrimp which, at that time, was cheap and plentiful. Over time, the bags and the shrimp themselves got progressively smaller. I started to hear the phrase “shrimped out” more and more often with regard to Gulf shrimp.

I used to stop in New Orleans or thereabouts to pick up shrimp when I was driving back from jobs in the Southern states back in the 90’s. I carried three ice chests and had my route back home centered on refilling the ice and driving as non-stop as possible. That shrimp also got increasingly small and spendy. I asked one fishmonger/shrimp peddler on the dock in Corpus Christi, TX if the Gulf was really “all shrimped out?” He said that was a factor, but the price spike was mostly because “the shrimpers are selling direct now to places like Omaha and Minneapolis where they can get triple the price for their catch.”

I have done airfreight for a living and I know that the mechanics and economics of shipping seafood—live OR frozen—are not that daunting. I have shipped live lobster and clams for a dinner party of 30 or more from Massachusetts to Arizona via air for less than $100.00. Now that globalized economy of scale had returned to bite me in the ass.

I go where my customers are moving to, so I don’t always know the area or the seasons and conditions for the local seafood offerings. I took a job to Houston, TX and was ready to go to nearby Galveston to fill my ice chests with shrimp after the job. A friend of the woman I moved told me “No fish from the Bay this week. The pollution advisories are up.” I knew that there were a lot of refineries and chemical processing in the area, but I did not know that the Bay was that polluted. This guy was a recreational fisherman, but his nonchalance about tailoring his hobby to the pollution advisories was telling…and discouraging. This was also years before the BP Oil Spill of 2010.

I saw something similarly affected by the global market on the other end of the country when I went in search of Alderwood Smoked Salmon on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. I took a job to Seattle and was advised by one of my crew who had lived in that area to check it out. “You can drive right up to the Indian fishing villages and buy it dirt cheap.” Again, I brought my ice chests, long unburdened by bounteous shrimp, and set off to get the deal.

Nope.

I drove all over Northern tip of the peninsula, by Sequim and Port Angeles, and found nada. The locals that I could get a word in edgewise either pointed me to the supermarket or said that they smoked the salmon for their own personal stock. When I actually went out on the dock, an unexpectedly large and commercial-looking dock for a “fishing village,” I did find a foreman of sorts who told me “Yeah, we ship most of that salmon to Japan. Who do you think built this dock?”

My busman’s holidays haven’t all been colored by failures and misjudgments. Some of my mistakes have proven surprisingly fortuitous. My first cross-country moving job in the mid-80’s took me to Albany, NY. I lived near there when I was a kid and I have zero food memories about it. What I did get from looking at the map though was my proximity to the New England shore. After I unloaded the truck I set out for Boston for lobster. I had no idea where I was going or how to get there. I hadn’t even considered where I was going to stay or park my truck. All I knew was that I had driven thousands of miles, much of it through grey, brown and oil-blackened snow to get here and I was gonna have some real lobster. Actually, I was gonna have a LOT of lobster. Big, fat, juicy, butter-bathed, fresh and CHEAP lobster!

I made it maybe fifty or so miles north of Albany past Saratoga Springs and decided to stop and get some food to tide me over until I got to the real food. I saw a tiny, nondescript looking roadside restaurant I could best describe as a Lobster-in-the-Box. The sign advertised “Fresh Seafood” and, despite my reservations and the overwhelming sense of incongruity, I knew I was only a few hours from the water, so it was, somehow, possible.

I had no problem parking in the near-empty lot and walked into the completely empty burger joint/lobster shack. My jaw dropped when I saw the menu listing for two large tails for five dollars. My cynicism was bringing to mind images of Three Mile Island lobster or maybe that weird, South American, lobster-esque stuff you get at Red Lobster.

It killed! Served in a paper basket with plastic cups of melted butter and plastic knife and fork, this was clearly someplace all about the food. Best of all was that my midday solitude allowed me to rumble and moan and mutter “Oh Godddaaaayyyyyyuuuummmm!” unfettered and unobserved. I was looking around through the windows for nearby hotels. There was a good chance I would not leave this place. The best lobster I have ever had…….came from burger shop in upstate New York.

I have some places that I admittedly go into with low expectations…and a suitcase full of Power Bars and canned sardines. If I go someplace like Cleveland, where all I can remember about it is that the river caught fire, I’m probably going to play it safe and try and live off of what’s in the hotel vending machine rather than sample the local fare. That is exactly how I felt about my trip to Atlantic City, NJ.

I was wrong.

I was so depressed by the empty, Vegas-like glitz of the Boardwalk and the Third-World squalor west of it that I almost forgot that I was on the shore. This was one of those places to hit and split, not hang around and vacation in. I don’t drink or gamble or care much for magicians or Elvis impersonators, so the casinos don’t do much for me. I cruised the boardwalk and tried to find someplace with some stellar piece of seafood to salvage my otherwise altogether disheartening adventure.

The best I could find was an Irish sports bar with an intriguing food menu on the window. I sifted through appetizers and combo plates and finally settled on the shrimp Scampi, raw oyster and raw clam entrees. The server thought I mis-ordered and explained that all three were full size (and full price) entrees. I told her that that was fine, explaining my harrowing journey from the desert through thousands of miles of hostile terrain just to get here and check out their oyster shooters. “And please hold the sides on two of the three orders.”

When the server brought out the oysters I scanned the tray full of large and luscious looking pearls of saltwater kissed splendor and asked

“Could I get some horseradish with these oysters, please?”  

“Those are the clams, sweetie. They’re Jersey Top Necks.”

I had never seen clams this size before. I have had rubbery little marble-sized steamers and painfully spendy, quarter-sized Ipswich clams at a trendy raw bar but nothing that even came close to these succulent looking behemoths. The only give away—once I knew to look for it—was the shell. The clams themselves were at least 2-3” in diameter and ¾” thick. They were radiantly pink and moist with a mild but singular taste redolent with the taste of fresh seawater.

 Every bite served as a cascade of cleansing sunshine to wash away the bitter taste of driving through Philadelphia and thoughts of Donald Trump and the traumatic experience of having to drive through Texas…again. Every minor wafting touch of sea air stocked my store of endorphins and made me almost ready for the next day’s flight home. Every time I think of this trip, with all its horrors and pitfalls and close calls and disappointments, my first, and main memory is those Jersey Top Necks.

That is powerful testimony.